The Power of Simplicity

A Management Guide to Cutting Through the Nonsense and Doing Things Right
by Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin

Business seems more complicated than ever today. Executives must somehow cope
with accelerating technologies, rapid communications, the global economy, and
the ever-increasing pace of business. All of these complex problems have caused
people to look for complex answers.

According to Jack Trout, the solutions you need are surprisingly simple. Trout
is the acclaimed author of several classic books, including Positioning: The
Battle for Your Mind; Marketing Warfare; The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing; and
The New Positioning. These texts have had an enormous impact on the way
business leaders think about marketing. He also heads Trout & Partners, which
consults to such clients as AT&T, IBM, Merck, and Southwest Airlines.

In this summary, we'll first consider why most companies reject the simple
approach. Then we'll explore how you can unleash the power of simplicity by
taking a no-nonsense approach to language, information, strategy, budgets,
pricing, planning, marketing and more.

Most people resist simplicity because they are afraid of it. Being called
"simple" has never been a plus. A "simple-minded" person is usually considered
stupid, gullible, or feeble-minded.

Psychologist John Collard of the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University

found that one of the most common human fears is the fear of thinking. Instead
of thinking things through for ourselves, many of us prefer to rely on the
analysis of others. Trout contends that this explains why the worldwide
management consulting business is expected to grow to $114 billion by the year
2000. Another psychologist, Dr. Carol Moog, points to a "paranoia of omission"
in our culture. That is, you have to cover every base because anything you miss
can be fatal to your career. If you have only one idea, and that idea fails,
you have no safety net. With a variety of ideas, you can hedge your bets. The
result: complexity.

It's not that it doesn't pay to analyze a problem from every angle and to come
up with several potential solutions. In most cases, it does. The problem comes
when the process stops there. Without narrowing down the multiple options,
decisions may contradict each other, and people may work in different
directions. The solution is simplicity. Look at all of the alternatives, and
then choose a single path.

That approach worked for Procter & Gamble. Until recently, P&G was marketing
dozens of varieties of such products as Crest toothpaste and Head & Shoulders
shampoo. The new management realized that the company's product lines had grown
so complicated that consumers were confused.

P&G standardized product formulas, abandoned many of its promotions, and trimmed
its product lines. With fewer items to sell, sales soared. In hair care alone,
P&G is selling half as many products, and its share has risen by five points.
Over the past five years, P&G has used simplicity to increase its business by a
third.

The antidote for fear of simplicity is just basic common sense. But people tend
to distrust simple, obvious ideas that seem right. They seem too easy, so
people assume there must be a hidden, more complex answer.
The fact is that what's obvious to you will seem obvious to everyone else.
That's why an obvious answer usually works so well in the marketplace.

The dictionary defines common sense as native good judgment that is free from
emotional bias or intellectual subtlety. It's also not dependent on special
technical knowledge. In other words, common sense allows you to see the reality
of a situation eliminating self-interest from your decision.

For example, if you were to ask 10 people at random how well a Cadillac would
sell if it looked like a Chevrolet, it's likely that every one of them would
reply, "Not very well."

These people would be using nothing but common sense in their judgment. They
would have no technical knowledge or research data to evaluate. To them, a
Cadillac is a big, expensive car, and a Chevrolet is a smaller, inexpensive car.
They can't help but see things as they really are.

But at General Motors, executives are seeing the world as they want it to be.
Ignoring common sense, they first developed the Cimarron, which was a disaster,
and then the Catera, another Cadillac that looks like a Chevrolet.

To think simply and with common sense, start by following three guidelines:

1. Get your ego out of the situation. Good judgment is based on reality.
The more you screen things through your ego, the farther you get from
reality.
2. Avoid wishful thinking. We all want things to go a certain way, but in
many cases we can't control the outcome. Good common sense tends to be in
tune with the way things are really going.
3. Get better at listening. By definition, common sense is based on what
others think: It's thinking that is common to many people. If you don't
pay attention to others, you shut yourself off from common sense.

SIMPLIFY your LANGUAGE

One reason why it is getting harder to understand people is because the English
language is growing more complicated. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he only
had 20,000 words with which to work. When Abraham Lincoln composed his powerful
Gettysburg Address, he could choose from about 114,000 words.

Today, there are more than 600,000 words in Webster's Dictionary, and many
people try use as many new, fancy terms as possible. Sadly, there is no
shortage of ways to take a simple idea and make it complex.

For example, "It is not efficacious to indoctrinate a superannuated canine with

innovative maneuvers" is just a long-winded way of saying, "You can't teach an
old dog new tricks."

Similarly, too many business reports take an idea like, 'Where there's smoke,
there's fire," and try to give it a ring of authority by turning it into
something along the lines of "Visible vapors that issue from carbonaceous
materials are a harbinger of imminent conflagration."

In the quest to make simple, commonsense ideas sound complex and profound, many
managers rely on buzzwords. Instead of suggesting, "Let's make a plan," they
announce, "We need to dimensionalize this management initiative."
Business jargon has gotten so out of control that, in 1998, The Wall Street
Journal ran a story about a new corporate sport called "buzzword bingo."
Employees keep score during meetings as their bosses spout clichs like
"deliverables" and "impactfulness."

When reports, meetings, and presentations are not simple and to the point,
people tune out, time is wasted, and nothing gets done. Whenever you hear or
read a confusing word or concept, ask for a translation in clear, plain
language.

Journalists are trained to write simply, to appeal to a grade-school reading

level. The 10 principles of clear writing that managers need to learn are as
follows:

1. Keep your sentences short.

2. Pick the simple word over the complex word.
3. Choose the familiar word over the obscure one.
4. Avoid unnecessary words.
5. Put action in your verbs.
6. Write the way you talk.
7. Use terms that your readers can picture.
8. Tie in with your reader's experience.
9. Make full use of variety.
10. Write to express, not to impress.

COPING WITH INFORMATION OVERLOAD

To simplify your life at work, you need to do more than presenting information
more clearly. You must also get to the point of all the material you read more
quickly.

Today's business managers read an average of 1 million words per week. With so
much information to digest, it's no wonder that Baby Boomers suffer more memory
lapses than any previous generation, according to USA Today. If your mind is
comparable to the memory of a computer, don't be surprised to find that the disk
is full.

For example, it wasn't long ago that you only needed to remember a few numbers:
your telephone number and your address. Today, you might need to memorize a
burglar alarm code, computer password, fax and cell phone numbers, calling card
numbers, ATM PIN, and countless other strings of digits.

To perform at your best, you have to shed some of the clutter in your brain.
First, be realistic: There's no way you can absorb all the information that
comes your way. Once you admit that you're human, you can let some things slide
and prioritize the rest. You don't have to read, much less answer, every piece
of information that reaches your desk. This will allow you more time for the
important stuff.

Next, decide what sources of information are really critical for you and your
business. What newsletters and periodicals are "must" reads? What distribution
lists does your name really have to be on? And to which associations do you
need to belong?

Boil it down to the highest-quality resources, and focus on those first. Get
rid of what you can do without. Take advantage of services that, like Audio-
Tech, filter a mass of information into an easy-to-digest format. COR
Healthcare Resources scans thousands of articles in 150 publications each month
to produce newsletters with bottom-line insights.

As the company's founder explains, "[The newsletters'] value depends just as

much on what we leave out as what we putin.... We're strong believers that once
complexity is reduced...decision-makers can start to take charge of their jobs
and their lives."

Take control of information in your business as well. Demand that any report
that reaches you must begin with a one-paragraph or one-page summary. If it
doesn't, send it back.

The challenge isn't just to cut back on the amount of paper that piles up on
your desk. E-mail can quickly accumulate on your computer, too. A Gallup Poll
in May, 1998 found that a typical office worker sends and receives an average of
60 e-mails everyday.

Instead of spending all day responding to electronic messages, narrow down the
ones you read. Scan the subjects of the email for urgent issues; then
prioritize by the sender, giving key people such as clients and your boss top
priority. Or take advantage of filters in your e-mail package to separate those
messages from the rest that you receive.

Today, more and more executives' lives are starting to resemble the experience
of the engineering vice president who recently moaned, "I would start the
morning with 40 e-mail messages, the phone ringing off the hook, the fax going,
and that's on the few days I was in the office and not on the road."

Remember that all of this technology, such as cell phones, pagers, laptop
computers, e-mail, and so on, was supposed to make you more productive and
efficient. Today, the opposite is true. It comes down to this: Because more
information can reach you, it's become increasingly hard for you to reach the
information you need.