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Simple: conquering the crisis of complexity by Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn
THE subtitle of this book is conquering the crisis of complexity, and a crisis it is.
Are you paying for things you did not order because the account is too complex to understand? Americans are paying $2bn each year for services they did not request or use on their phone accounts, because the format is confusing.
Research into insurance policy holders indicates that a third to a half of them misunderstood what they have bought.
Most medicine warning labels and inserts are insufficient warning to all but the medically trained.
The solution to these problems is to reduce or eliminate complexity. Simplification is not degeneration into the simplistic. The distinction lies in understanding what is essential and meaningful as opposed to what is not, and then ruthlessly eliminating what is not essential and meaningful.
Why has everything we encounter become so complex? The authors cite many factors, one of which is that simplicity is hard to achieve, which is why Leonardo da Vinci is referred to as “the ultimate sophistication”.
We also need to accept that it is deliberately used as a money-making tactic by those who wish to extract what we would not hand over, if we only knew. On the other hand, many think that more information equals greater clarity, which it definitely does not.
Simplification involves removing complications, unnecessary layers, or distractions while focusing on the essence of what people want and need in that situation.
Are some industries and offerings too complicated to be simplified? Consider air travel with the various forms of reservation, seating, meals, check-in, landing rights, disembarking and embarking, plane maintenance, fuel volatility, and more. Add to this the overcrowding in the industry.
Southwest Airlines have made their mark through simplifying everything from booking to the maintenance of their planes, from meals to their baggage policy. The result is that they are one of the world’s few consistently profitable airlines.
There are probably very few things that cannot be further simplified. What simplification requires is a thorough and persuasive commitment by an organisation to “empathize, distil, and clarify”.
Consider the following situation. You are asleep on the 20th floor of a hotel in a foreign city. At 03:30 you are awoken by a fire alarm. You can smell smoke. You recall seeing the evacuation instructions on the door.
You try desperately and unsuccessfully to decipher what map is describing, as the alarm is blaring in your ears and the smell of smoke is becoming more intense.
The map was designed by a safety agency in a well-lit office, by a relaxed and cheerful safety officer. When he was done, he was sure he had a good piece of work. It was clear and accurate. So, what went wrong?
He had not considered how one feels on the 20th floor of a hotel in a foreign city at 03:30, when you are woken up by a fire alarm and can smell smoke. Your emotional state was not considered; the safety officer had not empathised with the condition of the reader of the map under duress.
Empathising with the clients, whether it is the intake at a hospital or your monthly bank or cellphone statement, requires an understanding of how the recipient will experience what you are communicating.
The second factor in simplification is to distil the information or procedure down to its essentials. These essentials are defined by the user’s requirements, not those of the company.
In the Siegel+Gate 2011 Global Brand Simplicity Index, one brand stood out above the rest: Google. Using Google is a simple and a rewarding experience. Visit their landing page and then the landing page of other search engines. Google’s is uncluttered and simple.
To keep it this way, any new features staff wish to add to the landing page must go through an “audition”. The goal is for the home page to have the fewest number of points, because more points mean less simplicity.
This is not only an aesthetic consideration - rather, it has been proven to be an economic one. Studies in the USA have shown that consumers are willing to spend about 20 minutes trying to work out how to operate a new toy. After that, they give up and return the toy to the store.
The cost of returned products in the USA is $100bn a year, excluding the reputational damage.
Flip, a video camera, has only one button. Press it and you start videoing and press it again to stop. That is it. A primary school child and an adult can use it, but it is not a cheap, crude toy.
Rather, it is a highly sophisticated camera with proprietary, built-in exposure control algorithms to make sure the picture maintains a smooth look over a range of lighting conditions. You do not see all the complexity, all you see is the elegant simplicity, the distillation of the user’s needs into a convenient video camera.
Two million units were sold in the first six months it was on the market, and it held an impressive 37% of the camcorder market in 2011.
The third part of the simplification process is the clarification aspect. According to health research organisation NEIH, people’s inability to follow prescription drug instructions cost $290bn in medical expenses each year. The instructions are obviously not clear enough for the users.
The problem is compounded when you have multiple drugs in your medicine cupboard, all in very similar-looking vials.
A pioneer in this field was alerted to the problem when her grandmother took ill from mistakenly using her grandfather’s similar-looking medication. The medicine labelling, she discovered, was practically unreadable even for her, a young woman.
She devised a very simple format that would occupy most of the size of the label and contain only three pieces of information. What is the name of the person for whom then medicine is intended? What is the name of the medicine and the dosage prescribed? How should it be taken?
Any business or service can increase its appeal to customers merely by simplifying the engagement with them. The number of touch-points where improvement can be made inexpensively and quickly is substantial.
The range includes product instructions, invoicing, correspondence, and even finding your contact details. The simplicity of getting information on how you can serve potential customers is widely indicated.
There is gold in this book. Read it.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights : High -+--- Low
Practical: High -+--- Low
- Fin24
* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
THE subtitle of this book is conquering the crisis of complexity, and a crisis it is.
Are you paying for things you did not order because the account is too complex to understand? Americans are paying $2bn each year for services they did not request or use on their phone accounts, because the format is confusing.
Research into insurance policy holders indicates that a third to a half of them misunderstood what they have bought.
Most medicine warning labels and inserts are insufficient warning to all but the medically trained.
The solution to these problems is to reduce or eliminate complexity. Simplification is not degeneration into the simplistic. The distinction lies in understanding what is essential and meaningful as opposed to what is not, and then ruthlessly eliminating what is not essential and meaningful.
Why has everything we encounter become so complex? The authors cite many factors, one of which is that simplicity is hard to achieve, which is why Leonardo da Vinci is referred to as “the ultimate sophistication”.
We also need to accept that it is deliberately used as a money-making tactic by those who wish to extract what we would not hand over, if we only knew. On the other hand, many think that more information equals greater clarity, which it definitely does not.
Simplification involves removing complications, unnecessary layers, or distractions while focusing on the essence of what people want and need in that situation.
Are some industries and offerings too complicated to be simplified? Consider air travel with the various forms of reservation, seating, meals, check-in, landing rights, disembarking and embarking, plane maintenance, fuel volatility, and more. Add to this the overcrowding in the industry.
Southwest Airlines have made their mark through simplifying everything from booking to the maintenance of their planes, from meals to their baggage policy. The result is that they are one of the world’s few consistently profitable airlines.
There are probably very few things that cannot be further simplified. What simplification requires is a thorough and persuasive commitment by an organisation to “empathize, distil, and clarify”.
Consider the following situation. You are asleep on the 20th floor of a hotel in a foreign city. At 03:30 you are awoken by a fire alarm. You can smell smoke. You recall seeing the evacuation instructions on the door.
You try desperately and unsuccessfully to decipher what map is describing, as the alarm is blaring in your ears and the smell of smoke is becoming more intense.
The map was designed by a safety agency in a well-lit office, by a relaxed and cheerful safety officer. When he was done, he was sure he had a good piece of work. It was clear and accurate. So, what went wrong?
He had not considered how one feels on the 20th floor of a hotel in a foreign city at 03:30, when you are woken up by a fire alarm and can smell smoke. Your emotional state was not considered; the safety officer had not empathised with the condition of the reader of the map under duress.
Empathising with the clients, whether it is the intake at a hospital or your monthly bank or cellphone statement, requires an understanding of how the recipient will experience what you are communicating.
The second factor in simplification is to distil the information or procedure down to its essentials. These essentials are defined by the user’s requirements, not those of the company.
In the Siegel+Gate 2011 Global Brand Simplicity Index, one brand stood out above the rest: Google. Using Google is a simple and a rewarding experience. Visit their landing page and then the landing page of other search engines. Google’s is uncluttered and simple.
To keep it this way, any new features staff wish to add to the landing page must go through an “audition”. The goal is for the home page to have the fewest number of points, because more points mean less simplicity.
This is not only an aesthetic consideration - rather, it has been proven to be an economic one. Studies in the USA have shown that consumers are willing to spend about 20 minutes trying to work out how to operate a new toy. After that, they give up and return the toy to the store.
The cost of returned products in the USA is $100bn a year, excluding the reputational damage.
Flip, a video camera, has only one button. Press it and you start videoing and press it again to stop. That is it. A primary school child and an adult can use it, but it is not a cheap, crude toy.
Rather, it is a highly sophisticated camera with proprietary, built-in exposure control algorithms to make sure the picture maintains a smooth look over a range of lighting conditions. You do not see all the complexity, all you see is the elegant simplicity, the distillation of the user’s needs into a convenient video camera.
Two million units were sold in the first six months it was on the market, and it held an impressive 37% of the camcorder market in 2011.
The third part of the simplification process is the clarification aspect. According to health research organisation NEIH, people’s inability to follow prescription drug instructions cost $290bn in medical expenses each year. The instructions are obviously not clear enough for the users.
The problem is compounded when you have multiple drugs in your medicine cupboard, all in very similar-looking vials.
A pioneer in this field was alerted to the problem when her grandmother took ill from mistakenly using her grandfather’s similar-looking medication. The medicine labelling, she discovered, was practically unreadable even for her, a young woman.
She devised a very simple format that would occupy most of the size of the label and contain only three pieces of information. What is the name of the person for whom then medicine is intended? What is the name of the medicine and the dosage prescribed? How should it be taken?
Any business or service can increase its appeal to customers merely by simplifying the engagement with them. The number of touch-points where improvement can be made inexpensively and quickly is substantial.
The range includes product instructions, invoicing, correspondence, and even finding your contact details. The simplicity of getting information on how you can serve potential customers is widely indicated.
There is gold in this book. Read it.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights : High -+--- Low
Practical: High -+--- Low
- Fin24
* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
