We Complicate Things by Default

Look at what we eat. Simple food is usually better food. A plate of vegetables, grains, lentils or a piece of fish cooked plainly will do more for you than something that has passed through a factory, picked up a list of ingredients you cannot pronounce and come out in a bright packet. The more complicated the food becomes, the less goodness is left in it, and the more it costs.

Look at how we exercise. The best exercises are simple and work the whole body. Walking, running, push-ups, squats, lifting something heavy and putting it down again. They need little or no equipment and you can do them anywhere. Then we buy machines with screens, subscriptions and attachments. Complex equipment takes something simple and makes it hard to keep doing. Most of it ends up holding laundry.

These are small examples, but the pattern in them is not small. It runs through almost everything we build.

We complicate things by default

Nobody sets out to make things complicated. It happens on its own.

We overthink. A decision that needs ten minutes of clear thought gets three meetings and a discussion paper.

We say long lines. A point that fits in one sentence gets a paragraph, then a slide, then a supporting appendix.

We speak unnecessarily. We fill silence, repeat ourselves and explain things nobody asked about.

We over-engineer products and services. We add features because we can, options because someone might want them one day, and steps because they feel safer.

None of this feels like a problem while we are doing it. Each extra layer seems reasonable on its own. It is only when you step back and look at the whole thing that you see how heavy it has become.

That is why complication is the default. Simplicity takes effort. Complication only takes time.

Complexity is not competence

Nowhere is this clearer than in how organisations run projects.

Complex project methodologies, long documents and complicated diagrams only demonstrate incompetence.

That sounds harsh, so it is worth being clear about what it means.

A methodology with forty templates, twelve gates and a governance chart that needs its own legend does not show that a project is under control. It shows that nobody has worked out what actually matters, so everything has been included just in case.

A two-hundred-page requirements document does not show that the business is understood. Very often it shows the opposite. If the team truly understood what the organisation needed, they could say it in far fewer pages.

A diagram with sixty boxes and arrows going in every direction does not show a clear design. It shows that the design is not clear yet, even to the people who drew it.

Complexity is often used as a shield. If a document is long enough, nobody will read it closely enough to challenge it. If a diagram is dense enough, nobody will admit they do not understand it. If a methodology is heavy enough, it looks like rigour. But looking rigorous and being rigorous are not the same thing.

The person who really understands something can explain it simply. The person who does not tends to explain it at length.

Great things are simple

Think about the products and services you trust most. The tools you reach for without thinking. The supplier who is easy to deal with. The system at work that people actually like using.

Almost always, they are simple. Not basic, not cheap, not lacking in capability. Simple. They do what they are meant to do, they are easy to understand, and they do not ask more of you than they need to.

This matters for one reason above all: quality can be maintained sustainably only within simple products and services.

Every extra feature needs to be tested, supported and maintained. Every extra step in a process is another place for an error to creep in. Every extra report is another thing someone has to produce each month, long after anyone remembers why it was asked for.

Complex things can be made to work for a while. They can be launched, demonstrated and signed off. But keeping them working, year after year, with ordinary people on an ordinary budget, is where complexity catches up. Quality slowly slips, not because anyone stopped caring, but because there is simply too much to care for.

Simple things last because they can be looked after.

A simple example

Consider a council setting up the approval process for purchase orders in its new finance system.

The first design comes back with seven approval levels, different routes for different cost centres, exceptions for certain suppliers, a separate path for capital items and manual overrides for urgent requests. Everyone who reviewed it added a rule to cover a situation they had once seen. On paper it covers everything.

In practice, purchase orders sit in queues for days. Staff do not know who is holding them up. Managers approve things they do not understand because there are too many to review properly. Workarounds appear within weeks. Six months after go-live, the finance team spends more time chasing approvals than they did in the old system.

Now imagine a second design. Three approval levels, set by dollar value, aligned to the council’s existing delegations. One exception for emergencies, with a report reviewed monthly.

The second design is less clever. It does not cover every scenario. But people understand it, it moves quickly, and when something goes wrong it is easy to see where. It will still be working properly in five years, because it can be maintained by the people who use it.

The first design felt thorough. The second design actually is.

Simple is harder

This is the part most people miss. Simple is not the easy option. Simple is the hard one.

Making things simple requires real discipline, clarity of thought and a professional mindset.

Discipline, because you have to say no. No to the extra feature, the extra approval, the extra page. Every one of those requests will come with a good reason, and you have to decline most of them anyway.

Clarity of thought, because you cannot simplify something you do not understand. To make it simple, you have to know what the core of it is, what it is really for, and what can be removed without losing that. That takes more thinking, not less.

A professional mindset, because simplicity often does not look impressive. A short document looks like less work. A plain process looks like less expertise. It takes a certain confidence to hand over something simple and trust that its quality will speak for itself.

Anyone can add. It takes skill to take away.

The question that remains

The world is overcomplicating things by default. Our food, our fitness, our projects, our systems, our meetings and our messages all drift in the same direction unless someone pushes back.

That drift will not stop on its own. It only stops when someone decides, deliberately and repeatedly, to make things simpler than they would otherwise be.

Here are some questions to ponder.

What in your work has become complicated simply because nobody stopped it?

If you had to explain your project, your process or your product in one page, could you? And if not, is that because it is truly complex, or because it is not yet clear?

The world is complicating things by default. The question is: how are you striving to simplify?