During my last few years working full time, I was responsible for overseeing a range of various initiatives my company was doing in its R&D division to improve the efficiency of various business processes. A prerequisite for undertaking such an effort is understanding how things actually work — how value is created — since attempts to reduce the time or effort required to perform a complex, knowledge-based activity can easily do more harm than good if those attempting to improve it fail to grasp how the work gets done.
During that time I came across a quote that I found hugely insightful and also highly relevant to the work I was doing. I collect quotations that I find particularly astute or inspiring, so I captured this one and added it to my collection:
When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. And your solutions are way too oversimplified. Then you get into the problem, and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s where most people stop. The really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem, and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.
—Steve Jobs
I came across that quote yesterday as I was perusing my collection, and then I encountered another quote suggesting that an earlier influential American had had a related insight almost a century before:
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Those correlative insights sent me on a hunt for other quotes on the subject of complexity and simplicity that might be similarly insightful. I found these:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
—H. L. Mencken
Simplicity is hard to build, easy to use, and hard to charge for. Complexity is easy to build, hard to use, and easy to charge for.
—Chris Sacca
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
—Frederic Chopin
All worthwhile food for thought for anyone attempting to solve complex problems.