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According to Steve Jobs, “Simple is harder than complex. To make something simple, you have to work hard to make it clear.” It’s clear that keeping things simple leads to business success, but it’s surprisingly difficult to put into practice.
If simplicity is so hard, achieving it requires intentional effort, which is why many successful companies actively prioritize it as a value. IKEA’s commitment to simplicity is evident in their design, catalogs, store experiences, and more. One of Nike’s 11 management maxims is “Simplify and move forward,” focusing their teams on quickly adapting to new technologies and trends.
I believe simplicity is the engine of genius innovation. In fact, my entrepreneurial journey began with the idea of simplifying a complex and bureaucratic process. Today, the success of that idea creates new challenges. We serve millions of customers in over 100 countries with different needs. To address all of them, we need different features. Therefore, we have to find the simplest idea that will improve the experience of the maximum number of users.
Related: Why You Should Adopt Simplicity as a Strategy (And 3 Ways to Make It Happen)
Simplifying innovation is the secret to success
Some people think that to be an entrepreneur you have to bring a breakthrough technological innovation to the world, but in reality there is a lot of room to innovate by simplifying new technology and packaging it for a specific use case.
When we think about modern tech giants Google and Apple, neither of them invented the core technology — Apple wasn’t the first to build the home computer or the first to build the mobile phone, and Google wasn’t the first to develop a search engine — they both made existing innovations simpler and easier to use, and that was the secret to their success.
This is especially true now that we’re in the midst of a revolution driven by generative AI. While there are undoubtedly huge opportunities in creating new AI-driven technologies, there are even more opportunities in figuring out how to package these technologies into user-friendly software for specific use cases.
To do this, first master the technology and then put yourself in the shoes of your potential users: try to understand what is truly useful about your innovation and what barriers people might face when trying to use it.
The key is to find ways to simplify your technology and make it easy for your target users to understand and adopt – do this and you’ll be sure to succeed.
Simplify communication and work smarter
Another area in any business where simplification is crucial is communication and processes. As a company grows, it becomes harder to keep employees on the same page and ensure continuity between departments. Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, which can lead to mistakes. The more people involved in a project, the greater the chance of complicated workflows. This slows things down, wastes time, and limits your ability to make an impact on the business.
Start with communication. Using a single, simple language across your company is essential for people to understand each other. For example, reduce the use of jargon and three-letter acronyms, or make sure to explain them when you do use them. Organizing and archiving past documents and plans can help with onboarding new talent and ensure everyone can quickly find important information when they need it.
Create a culture of transparency where different departments share their plans with each other. Create frameworks that encourage this, like quarterly reviews and rolling out roadmaps. It’s impossible for employees to be actively involved in everything that happens at your company, but helping everyone participate passively keeps everyone on the same page and fosters ideas and collaboration across teams.
When communication is necessary, encourage your team to communicate in the most direct way possible. By simplifying communication and making it easier to understand, discussions will be more focused and decisions will be made faster.
Related: Simplicity is the key to effectively communicating your key messages
Put simplicity at the heart of your product
The idea of simplification can also be applied to product development. By making small incremental changes with a test user group, you can use an inspect and adapt methodology to understand user adoption and issues and innovate further accordingly. Periodically, you can also combine all these small changes into a larger product update that you roll out to everyone.
For example, a company adds a lot of value to their product with a new feature or release. In theory, this is great for users, but some users find the UI cumbersome and the new pricing options confusing. To use an analogy, some people are happy to be given ingredients to cook their own meal, but most people would rather have a chef do the cooking and enjoy the end result.
They realized this through user feedback and changed their UI to make it easier for users to get to their desired end result. By simplifying it, they were able to maximize the value of the new features they added to the product.
Related: Keep it Simple: Why Simplicity is the Key to Brand Success
Richard Branson once said, “Anyone can make things complicated. It’s hard to keep things simple.” Simplicity doesn’t happen by chance; it has to be done by design. You have to make it a story and the focus of your entire company. You have to put simplicity at the heart of everything. And when you do it successfully, the impact will be immense.