Keep it simple stupid

got it?

The word "simple" can be used in different contexts. It's perverse that it can be used (often rudely) to allude to lower intelligence - but it is also a sign of high intelligence in the context of being able to make complex stuff "easy to understand".

Simplicity is a sign of an ability to communicate complexity by breaking it down into easy to understand concepts or elements. Simple is, therefore, about an ability to communicate explanation. Not always a common ability.

We train finance professionals to carefully and accurately use numbers - even balancing the books implies the self checking mechanisms of accounting to ensure that debits equal credits - to the penny. After years of training and crunching we produce finance professionals who prize accuracy and think in fine detail - making sure that every number is absolutely accurate and calculated to consider every tangential or incidental causation or impact. Thats why today's spreadsheets can accommodate in excess of one million rows and sixteen thousands columns per sheet! Things can get really complex really quickly can't they? Believe me, for some MS Excel is a hobby as well as a tool (you know who you are!). That's before we even get to big data!

Of course the attention to detail and accuracy is prized as being essential in banking and elsewhere (less so in building transactional software for post offices in the UK it might appear ..... but thats another story altogether!).

Whilst we trust our Controllers, Analysts, Finance Directors and CFO's to be able to cover off the base of due accounting process with diligence and accuracy in their role of stewardship of an organisations numbers. We also rely on them to explain what's actually going on. Here to give true insight we need focus, clarity, brevity and our good friend, simplicity.

The best people I have worked with are able to explain challenging concepts, calculations, mechanisms or subjects in a simple way. They have the ability to explain what would otherwise appear complex. There are some people that I have worked with who were so lost in the detail that they cannot do any other than confuse and mystify when trying to explain something.

The former can distill something to three or four lines, bullets or numbers; whilst the latter will present by jumping around various huge spreadsheets filled with unreadable numbers and formulae - safe in the forlorn belief that you follow their logic - which you have long-before abandoned any chance of doing. Sounds familiar?

It's not that the latter are not highly inteligent or cannot grasp complexity - just that they have no hope in hell of explaining it to their colleagues. The former deal with complexity with intelligence - often emotional intelligence.

I have a liking for simplifying things. Not because I can't grasp complexity, nor that I deny its existence. But often the way to get to grips with any subject is to distill it to its essence and only then begin to layer in the details. Works for me anyway. 

In business always find people who can explain things well - simply; who give insight and brevity, not just pages of numbers, spreadsheets and charts: who can distill complexity down to simplicity. Then everything becomes much easier.

Simplicity Rules OK!