Simplify: The Message of Essentialism

The Importance of Simplicity

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less is my favorite business book of the year. Its key message is that by simplifying your life to focus on the key essentials, you get rid of the things that don’t matter to make room for the things that do. And the message applies to small businesses, too. I find I can work a 14-hour day exhausted only to realize that I ticked off many of the trivial items on my “To-do” list without tackling the most important items critical to the success of the business. I was reminded of this challenge when I read this morning’s newspaper article about the release of Knowledge@Wharton’s “Simplifying the Future of Work Survey”. The survey, conducted by the team at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, found that two-thirds of business leaders identified simplification as critical to the ability of businesses to innovate and compete.

Complexity is inefficient and costly. The Simplicity Consulting Group found that companies lose, on average, 10.2% of their earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization due to complexity. (I suspect that much of that loss is the result of duplication of efforts and waste or resources.) And complexity is lethal for business continuity planning. As stated in the first edition of Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses, (page 12), “Developing your contingency plan should not become a large bureaucratic effort. Indeed, to be effective, your small business’s contingency plans should be a model of clarity, understood by every member of the company. It begins with key management leaders and includes all of the employees, because in a disaster situation every person who is knowledgeable and prepared can make a critical difference to a successful outcome.”