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Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World
HOW SIMPLICITY TRUMPS COMPLEXITY IN NATURE, BUSINESS, AND LIFE
Complexity surrounds us. We have too much email, juggle multiple remotes, and hack through thickets of regulations from phone contracts to health plans. But complexity isn’t destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there’s a better way. By developing a few simple yet effective rules, people can best even the most complex problems.
In Simple Rules, Sull and Eisenhardt masterfully challenge how we think about complexity and offer a new lens on how to cope. They take us on a surprising tour of what simple rules are, where they come from, and why they work. The authors illustrate the six kinds o f rules that really matter - for helping artists find creativity and the Federal Reserve set interest rates, for keeping birds on track and Zipcar members organized, and for how insomniacs can sleep and mountain climbers stay safe.
Drawing on rigorous research and riveting stories, the authors ingeniously find insights in unexpected places, from the way Tina Fey codified her experience at Saturday Night Live into rules for producing 30 Rock (rule five: never tell a crazy person he’s crazy) to burglars� rules for robbery (“avoid houses with a car parked outside�) to Japanese engineers mimicking the rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo’s rail system. The authors offer fresh information and practical tips on fixing old rules and learning new ones.
Whether you’re struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides powerful insight into how and why simplicity tames complexity.
Complexity surrounds us. We have too much email, juggle multiple remotes, and hack through thickets of regulations from phone contracts to health plans. But complexity isn’t destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there’s a better way. By developing a few simple yet effective rules, people can best even the most complex problems.
In Simple Rules, Sull and Eisenhardt masterfully challenge how we think about complexity and offer a new lens on how to cope. They take us on a surprising tour of what simple rules are, where they come from, and why they work. The authors illustrate the six kinds o f rules that really matter - for helping artists find creativity and the Federal Reserve set interest rates, for keeping birds on track and Zipcar members organized, and for how insomniacs can sleep and mountain climbers stay safe.
Drawing on rigorous research and riveting stories, the authors ingeniously find insights in unexpected places, from the way Tina Fey codified her experience at Saturday Night Live into rules for producing 30 Rock (rule five: never tell a crazy person he’s crazy) to burglars� rules for robbery (“avoid houses with a car parked outside�) to Japanese engineers mimicking the rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo’s rail system. The authors offer fresh information and practical tips on fixing old rules and learning new ones.
Whether you’re struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides powerful insight into how and why simplicity tames complexity.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2015
431 people are currently reading
4433 people want to read
About the author
Donald Sull
3books17followersDonald Sull is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a global authority on managing in turbulent markets, and directs a week-long course on effectively executing strategy in volatile markets. He has been identified as a leading management thinker by The Economist, the Financial Times, and Fortune which named him among the ten new management gurus to know. The Economist listed his theory of active inertia among the ideas that shaped business management over the past century.Sull has published five books, including The Upside of Turbulence (2009). His book Made in China was namedone of the top eight business books of 2005 by the Financial Times and his book Why Good Companies Go Bad was a finalist for the Academy of Management’s Outstanding Management Book Award. Sull has also written more than 100 book chapters, case studies, and articles, including several best-selling Harvard Business Review articles.As a consultant and management educator, Sull has worked with companies including Mars, Oracle, PIMCO, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Airline, Baker & McKenzie, Burberry, and Schneider Electric. He speaks regularly at leading management conferences, such as Microsoft’s CEO Summit and the McKinsey Strategy Summit.Prior to academia, he worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, and a management-investor with the leveraged buyout firm Clayton & Dubilier on the Uniroyal-Goodrich Tire Company deal. Sull received his AB, MBA, and doctorate from Harvard University, where he taught entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School before rejoining the London Business School faculty as a professor of management practice in strategy and entrepreneurship. Sull has won teaching awards at both London Business School and Harvard University. He remains active in private equity as an investor and advisor to start-up companies.
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November 11, 2016
I design (and follow!) rules for a living, so I’m rather interested in rules. My attitude is I try to craft the most complete set of rules that I know for sure I can follow. Now, in the narrow setting within which I operate, the rules are executed by a computer, so there’s no risk they will be forgotten. The way I see it, the constraint is that they should be simple enough that I can trust they will never contradict each other or cancel each other out or land me in a place where I have no rule to follow.
In other words, you could say that my motto is to use “as complicated rules as I can handle�
It’s no exaggeration, then, to say that the authors and I start from pretty much the opposite side of the spectrum, and it is therefore with great interest that I picked up this book. Also, I went to the same school as the main author and he seems to have been teaching at the business school I attended (and at the time when I attended, funnily enough, though I don’t seem to remember him) and that gave me the comfort to buy the book and learn something.
The book has three parts.
The first part of the book is an apology for and a wordy taxonomy of “simple rules,� supported by examples. Rules for making decisions come under three categories: “boundary rules� (yay or nay), “prioritizing rules� (a > b > c) and “stopping rules� (e.g. when to acknowledge that you’re going to have to propose to your girlfriend). Rules for doing things better also come under three categories: “how to� rules distil an art into a small set of principles; “coordination rules� are used by units of a large ensemble to lend it its macro properties; “timing rules� and “time pacing� rules guide when to take action. I could not tell apart “stopping rules� from “timing rules� but maybe that’s just me.
Next comes a chapter on how to craft rules. Natural selection does plenty of crafting (I can see how most of nature’s “coordination rules� are generated along those lines), but we are encouraged to “codify personal experience,� “draw on the experience of others,� “distil scientific evidence,� and “negotiate an agreement� on what rules to follow.
Finally comes the third and longest part of the book, which is a laundry list of cases where “simple rules� were applied. I found it very tedious and evenly split between companies I never heard of that followed closely the advice of the author and famous/successful companies and individuals who did not really follow simple rules at all. In particular, four pieces of advice are given:
1. find what will move the needles;
2. choose a bottleneck;
3. craft the rules;
4. change the rules when the facts on the ground change.
The successful examples I’d heard of before only really seemed to be following the fourth piece of advice, which to me makes total sense.
I could have done without the last 110 pages of this book basically.
I can totally see how a single athlete or gambler or performer or criminal acting without ready access to a cheatsheet or a computer would do well to stick to a couple basic rules. But in a world where Formula 1 pitstop strategies are decided by teams of scientists using stochastic programming I think the whole concept is a bit of a gimmick, and sadly that’s also how I ended up feeling about the book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX OF SIMPLE RULES (SPOILER ALERT WRIT LARGE!!)
Michael Pollan rule:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Surgeon General WWII triage rules:
1. Sort into following categories
---> Stable vital signs: Green
---> Unlikely to survive even with heroic medical intervention: Black
---> Badly injured (a shot at survival, but only if they receive immediate attention: Red
---> Others: Yellow
2. Give those with black tag palliative care
3. Treat the rest in the order Red, Yellow, Green
HF rules for investing in Yeltsin Russia:
1. Have revenues of $100 million to $500 million
2. Compete in an industry in which we have previously invested
3. Offer products the typical Russina family might purchase if they had an extra $100 to spend per month
4. Work only with executives who know criminals but are not criminals themselves
Zipcar Rules:
1. report damage
2. keep it clean
3. no smoking
4. fill'er up
5. return on time
6. pets in carriers
Chefs' Rules:
1. Do not copy recipes by other chefs
2. Do not pass proprietary information from a chef on to others without permission
3. Always acknowledge the author of the recipe
Rules judges actually follow (but shouldn't) when deciding on bail:
1. Did the prosecution either request conditional bail or oppose bail altogether?
2. Were conditions imposed on the bail by a judge earlier in the process?
3. Did a previous court insist on keeping the defendant in custody?
Burglars' rule for breaking in:
Avoid houses with a vehicle parked outside
DARPA rules:
1. The project must further the quest for fundamental scientific understanding
2. The project just have a practical use
Obama's rules for sending in the drones:
1. Does the target pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people?
2. Are there on other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat?
3. Is there near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured?
Cash-strapped private Brazilian railway CEO's (Alex Behring's) rules during financial crisis:
1. Projects that remove bottlenecks to growing revenues
2. Projects that provide benefits immediately
3. Projects with minimal up-front expenditures
4. Projects that re-use existing resources
Old Mesopotamian rule for investment:
A man should place his money one third in land, a third into merchandise, and keep a third in hand
Male crickets:"Choose a mate who meets your quality threshold"
Loeb's stopping rule:
If an investment loses 10 percent of its initial value, sell it
Rules to stop eating:
Parisian: Stop eating when I start feeling full
Chicago: Stop eating when I run out of a beverage
Chicago (bis): Stop eating when the TV show I'm watching is over
Scott Fischer's Everest climbing rule:
If you aren't at the top by two o'clock, it's time to turn around
Donald Sull's bouncer rules:
1. Don't let trouble in the door
2. Stay sober until the last patron leaves
3. Double up for heavy metal, ska and punk bands
4. Keep the bikers on your side
Lobby's sports commentary how-to rules
1. set the scene;
2. describe the action;
3. give the score or results, regularly and succinctly;
4. explain, without interrupting, the stadium's reaction to the game's event;
5. share "homework," such as historical facts and figures or personal information;
6. assess the significance of the occasion and key moments
US Forest Service how-to rules
1. start an escape fire in the path of the advancing fire if possible;
2. go to where the fuel is thinner;
3. turn toward the fire and try to work through it;
4. don't let the fire choose the spot where it hits you
White Stripes how to rules:
1. no blues;
2. no guitar solos;
3. no slide guitar;
4. no covers (hugely broken later, btw);
5. no bass
Elmore Leonard how to rules:
1. avoid prologues;
2. never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue;
3. try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip
Google hiring rules:
1. look for eccentricity;
2. look for strong referrals from other Google employees;
3. avoid anyone with even the smallest inaccuracy on their resume
Locust coordination rules:
1. flee from locusts chasing you from behind
2. try to eat the locust in front of you if it gets too close
The Second City coordination rules:
1. build on whatever is said or done just beforehand by saying "Yes, and..."
2. don't tell jokes (because they stifle an emerging storyline by imposing an artificial punchline into an organic situation@
3. make others look good
Naploeon's "coordination" rule:
"march toward the sound of gunfire"
Insomniacs' timing rules:
1. get up at the same time every morning;
2. avoid going to bed until you feel sleepy;
3. do not stay in bed if you are not sleeping;
4. reduce the time spent in bed
Migrating dragonflies' time-pacing rules:
0. avoid headwinds and instead surf the prevailing breezes (not a time-pacing rule)
1. fly only when the nighttime temperature falls for two consecutive nights
2. stay put on windy days
Hilltopping rules for butterflies (from natural selection):
1. fly uphill most of the time
2. fly toward the highest slope in sight
3. pause to check out local peaks, even if they are not the highest, but leave if you do not get lucky right away"
Standup comedians' rule (from natural selection)
"don't steal jokes" (probably inversely related to success, but hey)
Tina Fey's rules (from codifying personal experience)
4. when hiring, mix Harvard nerds with Chicago improvisers and stir;
9. never tell a crazy person he's crazy
Slime propagating algorithm (from which the Tokyo tube drew "experience")
1. begin by searching randomly in many directions for food;
2. when you find food, thicken the tube;
3. when you don't find food, shrink the tube
Roomba vacuum cleaner (presumed) rules:
1. turn when you hit an object;
2. spiral when caught in a corner;
3. return to the docking station when power is about to run out
NOAA negotiated rule:
"all boats must stay two hundred yards away from the whales and four hundred yards away from their path"
Shannon's three rules for eating:
1. eat breakfast;
2. stay hydrated;
3. eat as much as you want of anything that can be picked, plucked or killed
In other words, you could say that my motto is to use “as complicated rules as I can handle�
It’s no exaggeration, then, to say that the authors and I start from pretty much the opposite side of the spectrum, and it is therefore with great interest that I picked up this book. Also, I went to the same school as the main author and he seems to have been teaching at the business school I attended (and at the time when I attended, funnily enough, though I don’t seem to remember him) and that gave me the comfort to buy the book and learn something.
The book has three parts.
The first part of the book is an apology for and a wordy taxonomy of “simple rules,� supported by examples. Rules for making decisions come under three categories: “boundary rules� (yay or nay), “prioritizing rules� (a > b > c) and “stopping rules� (e.g. when to acknowledge that you’re going to have to propose to your girlfriend). Rules for doing things better also come under three categories: “how to� rules distil an art into a small set of principles; “coordination rules� are used by units of a large ensemble to lend it its macro properties; “timing rules� and “time pacing� rules guide when to take action. I could not tell apart “stopping rules� from “timing rules� but maybe that’s just me.
Next comes a chapter on how to craft rules. Natural selection does plenty of crafting (I can see how most of nature’s “coordination rules� are generated along those lines), but we are encouraged to “codify personal experience,� “draw on the experience of others,� “distil scientific evidence,� and “negotiate an agreement� on what rules to follow.
Finally comes the third and longest part of the book, which is a laundry list of cases where “simple rules� were applied. I found it very tedious and evenly split between companies I never heard of that followed closely the advice of the author and famous/successful companies and individuals who did not really follow simple rules at all. In particular, four pieces of advice are given:
1. find what will move the needles;
2. choose a bottleneck;
3. craft the rules;
4. change the rules when the facts on the ground change.
The successful examples I’d heard of before only really seemed to be following the fourth piece of advice, which to me makes total sense.
I could have done without the last 110 pages of this book basically.
I can totally see how a single athlete or gambler or performer or criminal acting without ready access to a cheatsheet or a computer would do well to stick to a couple basic rules. But in a world where Formula 1 pitstop strategies are decided by teams of scientists using stochastic programming I think the whole concept is a bit of a gimmick, and sadly that’s also how I ended up feeling about the book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX OF SIMPLE RULES (SPOILER ALERT WRIT LARGE!!)
Michael Pollan rule:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Surgeon General WWII triage rules:
1. Sort into following categories
---> Stable vital signs: Green
---> Unlikely to survive even with heroic medical intervention: Black
---> Badly injured (a shot at survival, but only if they receive immediate attention: Red
---> Others: Yellow
2. Give those with black tag palliative care
3. Treat the rest in the order Red, Yellow, Green
HF rules for investing in Yeltsin Russia:
1. Have revenues of $100 million to $500 million
2. Compete in an industry in which we have previously invested
3. Offer products the typical Russina family might purchase if they had an extra $100 to spend per month
4. Work only with executives who know criminals but are not criminals themselves
Zipcar Rules:
1. report damage
2. keep it clean
3. no smoking
4. fill'er up
5. return on time
6. pets in carriers
Chefs' Rules:
1. Do not copy recipes by other chefs
2. Do not pass proprietary information from a chef on to others without permission
3. Always acknowledge the author of the recipe
Rules judges actually follow (but shouldn't) when deciding on bail:
1. Did the prosecution either request conditional bail or oppose bail altogether?
2. Were conditions imposed on the bail by a judge earlier in the process?
3. Did a previous court insist on keeping the defendant in custody?
Burglars' rule for breaking in:
Avoid houses with a vehicle parked outside
DARPA rules:
1. The project must further the quest for fundamental scientific understanding
2. The project just have a practical use
Obama's rules for sending in the drones:
1. Does the target pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people?
2. Are there on other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat?
3. Is there near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured?
Cash-strapped private Brazilian railway CEO's (Alex Behring's) rules during financial crisis:
1. Projects that remove bottlenecks to growing revenues
2. Projects that provide benefits immediately
3. Projects with minimal up-front expenditures
4. Projects that re-use existing resources
Old Mesopotamian rule for investment:
A man should place his money one third in land, a third into merchandise, and keep a third in hand
Male crickets:"Choose a mate who meets your quality threshold"
Loeb's stopping rule:
If an investment loses 10 percent of its initial value, sell it
Rules to stop eating:
Parisian: Stop eating when I start feeling full
Chicago: Stop eating when I run out of a beverage
Chicago (bis): Stop eating when the TV show I'm watching is over
Scott Fischer's Everest climbing rule:
If you aren't at the top by two o'clock, it's time to turn around
Donald Sull's bouncer rules:
1. Don't let trouble in the door
2. Stay sober until the last patron leaves
3. Double up for heavy metal, ska and punk bands
4. Keep the bikers on your side
Lobby's sports commentary how-to rules
1. set the scene;
2. describe the action;
3. give the score or results, regularly and succinctly;
4. explain, without interrupting, the stadium's reaction to the game's event;
5. share "homework," such as historical facts and figures or personal information;
6. assess the significance of the occasion and key moments
US Forest Service how-to rules
1. start an escape fire in the path of the advancing fire if possible;
2. go to where the fuel is thinner;
3. turn toward the fire and try to work through it;
4. don't let the fire choose the spot where it hits you
White Stripes how to rules:
1. no blues;
2. no guitar solos;
3. no slide guitar;
4. no covers (hugely broken later, btw);
5. no bass
Elmore Leonard how to rules:
1. avoid prologues;
2. never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue;
3. try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip
Google hiring rules:
1. look for eccentricity;
2. look for strong referrals from other Google employees;
3. avoid anyone with even the smallest inaccuracy on their resume
Locust coordination rules:
1. flee from locusts chasing you from behind
2. try to eat the locust in front of you if it gets too close
The Second City coordination rules:
1. build on whatever is said or done just beforehand by saying "Yes, and..."
2. don't tell jokes (because they stifle an emerging storyline by imposing an artificial punchline into an organic situation@
3. make others look good
Naploeon's "coordination" rule:
"march toward the sound of gunfire"
Insomniacs' timing rules:
1. get up at the same time every morning;
2. avoid going to bed until you feel sleepy;
3. do not stay in bed if you are not sleeping;
4. reduce the time spent in bed
Migrating dragonflies' time-pacing rules:
0. avoid headwinds and instead surf the prevailing breezes (not a time-pacing rule)
1. fly only when the nighttime temperature falls for two consecutive nights
2. stay put on windy days
Hilltopping rules for butterflies (from natural selection):
1. fly uphill most of the time
2. fly toward the highest slope in sight
3. pause to check out local peaks, even if they are not the highest, but leave if you do not get lucky right away"
Standup comedians' rule (from natural selection)
"don't steal jokes" (probably inversely related to success, but hey)
Tina Fey's rules (from codifying personal experience)
4. when hiring, mix Harvard nerds with Chicago improvisers and stir;
9. never tell a crazy person he's crazy
Slime propagating algorithm (from which the Tokyo tube drew "experience")
1. begin by searching randomly in many directions for food;
2. when you find food, thicken the tube;
3. when you don't find food, shrink the tube
Roomba vacuum cleaner (presumed) rules:
1. turn when you hit an object;
2. spiral when caught in a corner;
3. return to the docking station when power is about to run out
NOAA negotiated rule:
"all boats must stay two hundred yards away from the whales and four hundred yards away from their path"
Shannon's three rules for eating:
1. eat breakfast;
2. stay hydrated;
3. eat as much as you want of anything that can be picked, plucked or killed
October 7, 2015
Honestly, this book was a bit of a disappointment. Simple Rules could have easily been written as a two-page blog post. Here is a two sentence summary: Come up with a short list of rules for working and living so you don't waste time and overthink. This will become a strategy for you to become productive and profitable.
The case studies are too long and detract from the authors main points. For a book about simplicity, the authors should have written it more simply.
The case studies are too long and detract from the authors main points. For a book about simplicity, the authors should have written it more simply.
July 27, 2016
Simple rules are shortcut strategies or rules of thumb that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we make decisions.
Simple rules work because:
1) They provide a threshold level of structure while leaving ample room for discretion and flexibility.
2) They focus on key aspects of a decision while ignoring peripheral considerations, cutting down the complexity and adding parsing the signal from the noise to the decision process.
3) They are efficient. When time is short and information is either overabundant or scarce, simple rules can make decisions quickly.
Simple rules are not for every situation. Simple rules work well in situations where:
1) Flexibility matters more than consistency.
2) The links between cause and effect are poorly understood
3) Important variables are highly correlated
4) A few factors matter most
5) A gap exists between knowing what to do and actually doing it
A few of the examples provided in the book were really enlightening but some seemed to have only a loose connection to the principles in the book. My favorite was the description of how slime molds, which follow only a few simple rules, were used to design the Tokyo rail system:
"Slime mold is not an obvious source of inspiration for designing transportation in Tokyo, one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. For one thing, the slime mold has no brain. But this organism happens to be particularly adept at resolving its constant battle against starvation with an efficient yet resilient network of sprawling probes, precisely the tradeoff at the heart of designing rail systems. Slime molds act by sending out tube-like probes in multiple directions to search out food and transport nutrients. Scientific experiments show that the many-headed slime effectively lurches through complex terrain in search of food by mostly following efficient paths that are the shortest distance between one food source and the next. Yet occasionally the slime oozes along to its next meal via redundant routes that can work in a pinch, creating alternatives if paths to food sources are disrupted. "
"To model the complexity of Tokyo's rail system, the Japanese scientists placed oat flakes on pieces of glass, with each food source representing Tokyo or one of its thirty-six surrounding towns. The amount of food was proportional to the municipality's population. The scientists then watched as the slime mold figured out its food network. It grew from Tokyo outward, creating a network of interconnecting tubes that looked much like the existing rail system. The researchers then added lights, which slime molds avoid, to stand in for physical features like mountains and lakes where rail systems cannot go. "
Simple rules work because:
1) They provide a threshold level of structure while leaving ample room for discretion and flexibility.
2) They focus on key aspects of a decision while ignoring peripheral considerations, cutting down the complexity and adding parsing the signal from the noise to the decision process.
3) They are efficient. When time is short and information is either overabundant or scarce, simple rules can make decisions quickly.
Simple rules are not for every situation. Simple rules work well in situations where:
1) Flexibility matters more than consistency.
2) The links between cause and effect are poorly understood
3) Important variables are highly correlated
4) A few factors matter most
5) A gap exists between knowing what to do and actually doing it
A few of the examples provided in the book were really enlightening but some seemed to have only a loose connection to the principles in the book. My favorite was the description of how slime molds, which follow only a few simple rules, were used to design the Tokyo rail system:
"Slime mold is not an obvious source of inspiration for designing transportation in Tokyo, one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. For one thing, the slime mold has no brain. But this organism happens to be particularly adept at resolving its constant battle against starvation with an efficient yet resilient network of sprawling probes, precisely the tradeoff at the heart of designing rail systems. Slime molds act by sending out tube-like probes in multiple directions to search out food and transport nutrients. Scientific experiments show that the many-headed slime effectively lurches through complex terrain in search of food by mostly following efficient paths that are the shortest distance between one food source and the next. Yet occasionally the slime oozes along to its next meal via redundant routes that can work in a pinch, creating alternatives if paths to food sources are disrupted. "
"To model the complexity of Tokyo's rail system, the Japanese scientists placed oat flakes on pieces of glass, with each food source representing Tokyo or one of its thirty-six surrounding towns. The amount of food was proportional to the municipality's population. The scientists then watched as the slime mold figured out its food network. It grew from Tokyo outward, creating a network of interconnecting tubes that looked much like the existing rail system. The researchers then added lights, which slime molds avoid, to stand in for physical features like mountains and lakes where rail systems cannot go. "
October 18, 2015
I enjoyed the examples that the authors cite for simple rules helping to solve complex problems, but I wasn't entirely convinced by them. Also, the manner in which to create your own 'simple rules' wasn't really that simple. I thought that in a book with the title, Simple Rules, that they'd give me a checklist of how to do it. Step 1, 2, 3, you know. The simple rules for how to make simple rules. But, that wasn't the case. Since each problem, situation, business, and life is different, the authors essentially told the readers to use their discernment in the creation of the rules. Pick a 'bottleneck' and solve it. Almost too vague to be very helpful.
Despite these complaints, I did find a gem or two:
"Decisions that require coordination across different departments or teams are another good place to look for bottlenecks." pg 135 (The creation of the library's monthly newsletter came to mind for me on that one.)
"Better rules are better, and even apparently irrelevant rules can be reasonably effective if they happen to encourage helpful behavior." pgs 172-173 (The library's newest code of conduct policy? :p)
If you enjoyed Simple Rules, I'd suggest The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande (ways to simplify your work processes) or Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City by Kelly Leonard (for more simple rules on collaborations).
Despite these complaints, I did find a gem or two:
"Decisions that require coordination across different departments or teams are another good place to look for bottlenecks." pg 135 (The creation of the library's monthly newsletter came to mind for me on that one.)
"Better rules are better, and even apparently irrelevant rules can be reasonably effective if they happen to encourage helpful behavior." pgs 172-173 (The library's newest code of conduct policy? :p)
If you enjoyed Simple Rules, I'd suggest The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande (ways to simplify your work processes) or Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration--Lessons from The Second City by Kelly Leonard (for more simple rules on collaborations).
July 17, 2015
Simple Rules, how to thrive in a complex world by Donald Skull and Kathleen Eisenhardt. Simple rules are shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information. A real world application of this is the battle field and emergency room triage systems. An ER has simple rules of thumb which prioritize which patients are seen before other clients no matter what order they arrive. This allows the late arriving heart attack victim to be seen before the early arriving broken finger.The authors contend that simple rules have 3 features. They are few in number, they are applied to a single well defined problem, and they give concrete guidance without being overly limiting. Simple rules do not apply to all situations. There are times when detailed rules are needed, such as when precision and repeatability are needed such as preflight checklist where deviation from an accepted standard can cause trouble. Simple rules are effective when they facilitate 3 things, they allow for flexibility, when the cause and effect of actions are not well understood ,and when no single individual has all the needed information to make a decision. It takes the authors 46 pages to make their basic argument against complex rules in favor of simple ones. The remaining pages are spent applying them to various business and personal situations. The book is well written and has insightful examples. I would recommend this book for anyone trying to simplify their life, and trying to make decisions. One direct consequence of apply the concepts is that I was able to simplify my clothes buying decisions. I know to work. I will wear a golf shirt jeans to work, except when I need to go a formal event then I will wear a business suit.
May 2, 2016
The book makes a complete mess of terminology (complex/complicated) but the message is OK, although it could have been written in 10 pages.
April 2, 2016
You know those self-help books that start every new section with an anecdotal story. Man, I hate those books. The authors seem to think that everyone likes a story. Well, I do as a rule (see what I did there). But I want to pick my own stories, and choose when to read them. If I read a book which purports to lay out a way of methodically tackling the issues of life I don’t want to have to read 200 stories to get to the meat.
This book is about the worst offender in this genre. How many stories and anecdotes are there in this book? Who knows? You won’t ever know because you won’t ever finish it. Each story begins with a few paragraphs of pointless introduction- we get to read about history, jobs, evolution, manufacturing so on... Each story ends with a tiny nugget that leads tenuously on to some point that the authors wish to impress upon you, but which means nothing anymore because after the 3 pages of story you have forgotten every preceding point that it may have linked to.
This book could perhaps have been 30 or 40 pages of interesting strategy. It has been eeked out to 250 pages by the simple expedient of telling stories.
Listen authors: life is too f-ing short. We don’t want ‘entertaining� stories. We want meat.
This book is about the worst offender in this genre. How many stories and anecdotes are there in this book? Who knows? You won’t ever know because you won’t ever finish it. Each story begins with a few paragraphs of pointless introduction- we get to read about history, jobs, evolution, manufacturing so on... Each story ends with a tiny nugget that leads tenuously on to some point that the authors wish to impress upon you, but which means nothing anymore because after the 3 pages of story you have forgotten every preceding point that it may have linked to.
This book could perhaps have been 30 or 40 pages of interesting strategy. It has been eeked out to 250 pages by the simple expedient of telling stories.
Listen authors: life is too f-ing short. We don’t want ‘entertaining� stories. We want meat.
July 2, 2015
The premise of the book is interesting - simple rules to cut through complexity. Easy to remember, easy to execute, potentially unambiguous.
Like many nonfiction business books of this ilk it seems to be a good idea stretched out too long. The point is delivered quickly, there is really not that much structure that they teach and the use cases they represent are interesting but spread through the book.
A pretty straightforward read with many good ideas to extract. There is certainly more here than a magazine article but the book does end up being a little long and repetitive.
Like many nonfiction business books of this ilk it seems to be a good idea stretched out too long. The point is delivered quickly, there is really not that much structure that they teach and the use cases they represent are interesting but spread through the book.
A pretty straightforward read with many good ideas to extract. There is certainly more here than a magazine article but the book does end up being a little long and repetitive.
August 20, 2024
This was an incredibly thought provoking and informative book. I am reading it as part of a professional book club with my coworkers. It made me think about many of the things we do at work, and if there are ways we can reduce complexity while allowing for individual autonomy and discretion. There are also many applications to my personal life that I’m already considering (when to start a new hobby, how to excel in my sport, when to curb or follow my anxiety, etc.).
February 15, 2023
Хорошая идея, которая могла бы потянуть на эссе, но к сожалению растянута на книгу, так как за дело взялись профессора экономики. Простые правила могут быть полезны.
November 19, 2017
Maybe I’m just used to hearing about this kind of stuff, but I feel like this didn’t really say anything new or profound. I kept hanging with it to see if it would get better, but was a little disappointed. The gist is exactly the title - have simple rules. Use rules to make decisions, and only have a few of them. The book went through a lot of examples and stories so if you’re into that kind of stuff maybe you’d enjoy it more than me. Loved the concept, just felt like it could have been a blog post instead of a whole book
December 24, 2015
The key message in this book:
In a world of overwhelming complexity, Simple Rules are here to help. They help us make better choices and improve our performance, while remaining easy to follow and highly customizable. With experience, negotiation and considered observations of your own problems, you too can create your own personal Simple Rules and find easy fixes for even the most complicated of problems.
In a world of overwhelming complexity, Simple Rules are here to help. They help us make better choices and improve our performance, while remaining easy to follow and highly customizable. With experience, negotiation and considered observations of your own problems, you too can create your own personal Simple Rules and find easy fixes for even the most complicated of problems.
January 16, 2016
A nice light read, the first half of the book describes the 6 types of simple rules that exist. The 2nd half of the book provides even more examples of how companies have adopted simple rules in their corporations. To me, the 2nd half of the book was more interesting, and most probably more useful for people who are picking up this book.
January 24, 2016
There is nothing earth-shattering in this book on how simple rules can make excellent decisions. However, it presents the concepts in a way that is immediately useful. I can see how I use simple rules every day. Perhaps more importantly, I am now seeing places where I need to design some simple rules.
Read
May 4, 2015Simple fun and educational
I learned of this book from an interview with the author on a radio show. I was intrigued by the interview and purchased the book. What a joy to read! It is very insightful and fun to read.
I learned of this book from an interview with the author on a radio show. I was intrigued by the interview and purchased the book. What a joy to read! It is very insightful and fun to read.
April 30, 2015
Good advice for anyone, business life, personal life, any task needing quick decision making.
January 12, 2019
This book could be a good counterpoint to the current paradigm of applying machine learning to everything in business and society. Instead of increasing technical complexity, this perspective aims to popularize the notion that simple rules (never really defined in the book) can replace complex rules/decision-making procedures, which will actually increase the effectiveness of that procedure. The author believes most business and governmental organizations in the United States are plagued by overly-complex processes. The motivating examples given in the text for this include financial regulations that have sprung up post 08-09', and US domestic codes, like those that govern taxes. In support of this assertion, the author reports evidence of a direct relationship between rule complexity and non-compliance. This was convincing.
Simple rules are fine, but it's been my professional experience that simple rules are already rife in most large fortune 500 firms, especially in the operational level, and to a lesser extent in executive decision-making. Most firms are investing capital to find "non-simple" rules/decision-making processes in the guise of machine learning and AI applications to replace their ad-hoc/often heuristically simple rules. So although true for certain cases like governance, it may not be as true for businesses.
The structure of the book is "simplicity" itself, it's organized on a set of use-cases, where simple rules have effectively been deployed. These "simple rules" include: pre-flight checklist, medical triage, swiping right/left on dating-apps, the "French rule" of eating until you're "almost full", for maintenance of a healthy weight, Napoleon's rule of force deployment in the battlefield (finding the right number of rules, that provides enough direction, yet allows for creative expression in execution), and a host of flocking rules (locust swarms, bird flock migrations etc.). The later is directly taken from computer science, specifically multi agent-based modelling, where simple agent rule sets lead to interesting aggregated behaviour. Although, not mentioned in the book, often decentralized decision making is "almost as efficient" as optimized results (at least in the computer science context). A good example would be the systems that govern Amazon-Kiva's drone-fleet in warehouses. So, in these particular cases, there is some evidence of the power/potential of simple rules.
A glaring hole in the narrative that makes this book less practical for those who are trying to apply it in real life is that there are no chapters on how to discover simple rules. There are some discussions on identifying bottlenecks in operations/processes, doing workshops on identifying service goals, service target, and service delivery to identify pain-points, that could use a "simple rule". These, however, are mostly in the business strategy context, and I found the author's attempt to extend this to personal lives a bit lacking. One of the highlighted cases involved a person trying to find a date online which was unconvincing. There are many examples of people building increasingly elaborate procedures for their online dating profiles, and getting increasing (if not marginally smaller) gains.
The author's contention that simple rules often beat out more complicated ones is hard to accept, coming from a data-intensive environment. Yet, it could be possible that the industries where simple rules do not suffice (quant finance, certain types of high traffic/fast transnational internet-based companies, etc.) represent a minority of cases, and that for most people/organizations simple rules governing their operations/decision making is "enough", at least from a cost-benefit analysis with respect to incremental returns on adding more "complicated" rules.
This book has encouraged deeper introspection for me on the value of information in the burgeoning AI age. Are we using information/automation to band-aid over fundamentally flawed, over-complicated, societal processes? Could there be a fix done at some more basic governance level that would not require a machine learning adviser to do your taxes? (Yes) Recommended as a well-written contrarian viewpoint to the techno-utopian purview.
Simple rules are fine, but it's been my professional experience that simple rules are already rife in most large fortune 500 firms, especially in the operational level, and to a lesser extent in executive decision-making. Most firms are investing capital to find "non-simple" rules/decision-making processes in the guise of machine learning and AI applications to replace their ad-hoc/often heuristically simple rules. So although true for certain cases like governance, it may not be as true for businesses.
The structure of the book is "simplicity" itself, it's organized on a set of use-cases, where simple rules have effectively been deployed. These "simple rules" include: pre-flight checklist, medical triage, swiping right/left on dating-apps, the "French rule" of eating until you're "almost full", for maintenance of a healthy weight, Napoleon's rule of force deployment in the battlefield (finding the right number of rules, that provides enough direction, yet allows for creative expression in execution), and a host of flocking rules (locust swarms, bird flock migrations etc.). The later is directly taken from computer science, specifically multi agent-based modelling, where simple agent rule sets lead to interesting aggregated behaviour. Although, not mentioned in the book, often decentralized decision making is "almost as efficient" as optimized results (at least in the computer science context). A good example would be the systems that govern Amazon-Kiva's drone-fleet in warehouses. So, in these particular cases, there is some evidence of the power/potential of simple rules.
A glaring hole in the narrative that makes this book less practical for those who are trying to apply it in real life is that there are no chapters on how to discover simple rules. There are some discussions on identifying bottlenecks in operations/processes, doing workshops on identifying service goals, service target, and service delivery to identify pain-points, that could use a "simple rule". These, however, are mostly in the business strategy context, and I found the author's attempt to extend this to personal lives a bit lacking. One of the highlighted cases involved a person trying to find a date online which was unconvincing. There are many examples of people building increasingly elaborate procedures for their online dating profiles, and getting increasing (if not marginally smaller) gains.
The author's contention that simple rules often beat out more complicated ones is hard to accept, coming from a data-intensive environment. Yet, it could be possible that the industries where simple rules do not suffice (quant finance, certain types of high traffic/fast transnational internet-based companies, etc.) represent a minority of cases, and that for most people/organizations simple rules governing their operations/decision making is "enough", at least from a cost-benefit analysis with respect to incremental returns on adding more "complicated" rules.
This book has encouraged deeper introspection for me on the value of information in the burgeoning AI age. Are we using information/automation to band-aid over fundamentally flawed, over-complicated, societal processes? Could there be a fix done at some more basic governance level that would not require a machine learning adviser to do your taxes? (Yes) Recommended as a well-written contrarian viewpoint to the techno-utopian purview.
December 31, 2022
This book was probably better as a seminar. The content is 5 star, but the book itself feels more like 2-3. Sull and Eisenhardt discuss the value of simple rules, how to define them, and how to refine them over time. The process is heavily illustrated with examples. Examples are useful, but these end up taking center stage so that the process itself feels almost like a footnote to the stories. I do not blame the authors for this. There is not a good publication vehicle for useful, straightforward processes which do not need a whole book's worth of explanation. Plus, it was still a quick read overall, so the padding is easy to forgive. If you focus on the core process, the ideas are excellent and, in my opinion, critical for anyone who is in the role of crafting behavioral rules.
Simple rules are easy to remember and apply, narrow enough to provide concrete guidance, and flexible enough to allow individual judgment. Simple rules are tailored -- to a situation, its bottlenecks, and the preferences of the users. They can be used by individuals or by groups. Simple rules derived in one context will rarely translate exactly to another.
They differ from checklists. Like simple rules, checklists are concrete and easy to follow. However, checklists are meant to decrease flexibility and are useful when consistency is what matters most. For example, as Atul Gawande notes in The Checklist Manifesto, checklists are good for situations where there is a fixed set of best practices that is easy to execute but hard to remember, such as flight takeoff processes and for surgical preparation.
By contrast, simple rules are good for complex situations. Complexity arises when a system has many parts that interact in hard to predict ways. It may seem that complex problems call for complex solutions. Complex solutions fail in a couple ways. They are hard to use, which means that often they will not be used. Complex solutions often end up conflating signal and noise. Even in complex systems, there are generally a small number of dominant factors which have the greatest impact on outcomes. Simple rules can help focus attention on those. Simple rules are less prescriptive than complicated processes. A good example is Michael Pollan's simple rules for eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.". It's concrete and tailored to a particular situation, but it is flexible enough to allow personal preferences and situational details to shape individual choices.
Simple rules help promote alignment in groups. This shows up in the behavior of animals that live in large groups, like flocks of birds or colonies of bees or ants. The behavior of these animals, such as flocking behavior of birds, looks like it requires centralized planning and direction, but actually arises from each individual acting on the same set of simple rules. The same goes for humans. As the authors say, "Simple rules impose a minimal level of coordination, while leaving ample room for individuals to pursue their own objectives."
Simple rules can be categorized. Decision rules help us decide what to do. Boundary rules help us determine what is in or out, whether to say yes or no. Prioritizing rules help rank or categorize options to determine how to allocate limited resources. Medical triage rules are a type of prioritizing rule. Stopping rules help us decide when to stop pursuing an option or to reverse a decision. This might include when to make a decision when choices are presented sequentially or when to undo a decision such as selling a stock.
Other rules help us do things better. Process rules provide guidance for tasks that can benefit from having some structure but which are not amenable to rigid checklists. How-to rules are familiar to most of us. These rules help us learn or remember how to do something. Coordination rules help get something done when there are multiple actors involved. The rules of the road are coordination rules which allow many cars to drive on the road without constantly having to negotiate interactions. Timing rules help us figure out when to do things, such as the rhythm of a morning routine or sequencing rules that indicate that we should do X when Y happens.
Simple rules have many sources. Often, they evolve naturally from repeated experience. In the case of the behavior of bugs and birds, this is literally biological evolution. In humans, these rules often are encoded in individual intuitions or group norms. As Sull and Eistenhardt note, "While evolved rules benefit from legitimacy and relevance, they also have weaknesses. Evolved rules are often implicit and deeply entrenched, making it difficult to examine them critically when circumstances change, or abandon them when they become dysfunctional. Entrenched rules may prevent people from imagining alternative ways of being."
Simple rules can also be derived from the experience of others. This can be the experience drawn from similar situations, such as learning from experts in a field. Learning from the experience of others can also take the form of applying analogies from other domains. A particular type of learning from the experience of others is deriving rules from scientific evidence. These sorts of rules show up, for example, in the rules that doctors use to diagnose diseases.
Sometimes, simple rules are used to provide a framework for making decisions when people disagree. In these cases, the rules may be negotiated rather than derived from experiences or knowledge. Generally, negotiated rules are most effective when they are derived independent of particular decisions to be made. If everyone agrees up front on what rules will be used to make decisions, then there will be less disagreement when applying those rules to specific instances. Critical in this is that the rules themselves are developed with the input of relevant stakeholders.
The next part of the book lays out a process for crafting simple rules.
1. Figure out what will move the needles.
2. Choose a bottleneck.
3. Craft the rules.
In complex processes there are many candidates for simple rules. However, it is only worth applying them in the areas where it will make a real difference. If, for example, you have decided that the most important thing standing between you and greater happiness is improving your health, then it is probably most useful for you to focus on simple rules about your health and not, say, your relationships. The second step helps you figure out what will make the most impact within that area. Say, for example, that you already exercise regularly but tend to snack in the afternoon. Those snacks are likely to be a bottleneck that is worth focusing on. These first two steps are mostly about observation and data collection.
For the third step, it is critical to make sure that the right people are involved in forming the rules. Rules determined from on-high are generally not effective. Instead, simple rules are most effective when the people who will use them are involved in the design. Also, it is important to test and iterate on the rules. Most of the time, the first cut will have too many rules or rules that do not actually move the needle identified in the first step. It is also important to make sure the rules are concrete and easy to apply. Otherwise, they risk turning into platitudes. "Don't interrupt" is a better simple rule than "Create a respectful environment in meetings".
Rules need to be improved over time, as you learn more and as situations change. We improve rules by taking time to reflect on what works and what doesn't work. Often time, this reflection does not need to be explicitly focused on improving the rules. Just creating the time and space for reflection is often enough to cause improvement over time. We can also improve our rules by doing related by different activities. This cross pollination can help bring a fresh perspective to old activities and rules. Pursuing various ways to learn can also help us improve them more quickly. This might look like including formalized education on a topic with pursuing different types of experience.
Sometimes, it is not enough to incrementally improve rules. When the context changes dramatically enough, then it may be time to reset the rules completely. When this happens, mindlessly sticking to the old rules can be worse than having no rules at all because people. This chapter was short on substance, but one useful observation the authors made is that once you decide to change the rules, it is generally better to change them all at once rather than to try to introduce them slowly. That generally ends up getting you in a situation where you have two competing sets of rules which generally ends up confusing.
Simple rules are easy to remember and apply, narrow enough to provide concrete guidance, and flexible enough to allow individual judgment. Simple rules are tailored -- to a situation, its bottlenecks, and the preferences of the users. They can be used by individuals or by groups. Simple rules derived in one context will rarely translate exactly to another.
They differ from checklists. Like simple rules, checklists are concrete and easy to follow. However, checklists are meant to decrease flexibility and are useful when consistency is what matters most. For example, as Atul Gawande notes in The Checklist Manifesto, checklists are good for situations where there is a fixed set of best practices that is easy to execute but hard to remember, such as flight takeoff processes and for surgical preparation.
By contrast, simple rules are good for complex situations. Complexity arises when a system has many parts that interact in hard to predict ways. It may seem that complex problems call for complex solutions. Complex solutions fail in a couple ways. They are hard to use, which means that often they will not be used. Complex solutions often end up conflating signal and noise. Even in complex systems, there are generally a small number of dominant factors which have the greatest impact on outcomes. Simple rules can help focus attention on those. Simple rules are less prescriptive than complicated processes. A good example is Michael Pollan's simple rules for eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.". It's concrete and tailored to a particular situation, but it is flexible enough to allow personal preferences and situational details to shape individual choices.
Simple rules help promote alignment in groups. This shows up in the behavior of animals that live in large groups, like flocks of birds or colonies of bees or ants. The behavior of these animals, such as flocking behavior of birds, looks like it requires centralized planning and direction, but actually arises from each individual acting on the same set of simple rules. The same goes for humans. As the authors say, "Simple rules impose a minimal level of coordination, while leaving ample room for individuals to pursue their own objectives."
Simple rules can be categorized. Decision rules help us decide what to do. Boundary rules help us determine what is in or out, whether to say yes or no. Prioritizing rules help rank or categorize options to determine how to allocate limited resources. Medical triage rules are a type of prioritizing rule. Stopping rules help us decide when to stop pursuing an option or to reverse a decision. This might include when to make a decision when choices are presented sequentially or when to undo a decision such as selling a stock.
Other rules help us do things better. Process rules provide guidance for tasks that can benefit from having some structure but which are not amenable to rigid checklists. How-to rules are familiar to most of us. These rules help us learn or remember how to do something. Coordination rules help get something done when there are multiple actors involved. The rules of the road are coordination rules which allow many cars to drive on the road without constantly having to negotiate interactions. Timing rules help us figure out when to do things, such as the rhythm of a morning routine or sequencing rules that indicate that we should do X when Y happens.
Simple rules have many sources. Often, they evolve naturally from repeated experience. In the case of the behavior of bugs and birds, this is literally biological evolution. In humans, these rules often are encoded in individual intuitions or group norms. As Sull and Eistenhardt note, "While evolved rules benefit from legitimacy and relevance, they also have weaknesses. Evolved rules are often implicit and deeply entrenched, making it difficult to examine them critically when circumstances change, or abandon them when they become dysfunctional. Entrenched rules may prevent people from imagining alternative ways of being."
Simple rules can also be derived from the experience of others. This can be the experience drawn from similar situations, such as learning from experts in a field. Learning from the experience of others can also take the form of applying analogies from other domains. A particular type of learning from the experience of others is deriving rules from scientific evidence. These sorts of rules show up, for example, in the rules that doctors use to diagnose diseases.
Sometimes, simple rules are used to provide a framework for making decisions when people disagree. In these cases, the rules may be negotiated rather than derived from experiences or knowledge. Generally, negotiated rules are most effective when they are derived independent of particular decisions to be made. If everyone agrees up front on what rules will be used to make decisions, then there will be less disagreement when applying those rules to specific instances. Critical in this is that the rules themselves are developed with the input of relevant stakeholders.
The next part of the book lays out a process for crafting simple rules.
1. Figure out what will move the needles.
2. Choose a bottleneck.
3. Craft the rules.
In complex processes there are many candidates for simple rules. However, it is only worth applying them in the areas where it will make a real difference. If, for example, you have decided that the most important thing standing between you and greater happiness is improving your health, then it is probably most useful for you to focus on simple rules about your health and not, say, your relationships. The second step helps you figure out what will make the most impact within that area. Say, for example, that you already exercise regularly but tend to snack in the afternoon. Those snacks are likely to be a bottleneck that is worth focusing on. These first two steps are mostly about observation and data collection.
For the third step, it is critical to make sure that the right people are involved in forming the rules. Rules determined from on-high are generally not effective. Instead, simple rules are most effective when the people who will use them are involved in the design. Also, it is important to test and iterate on the rules. Most of the time, the first cut will have too many rules or rules that do not actually move the needle identified in the first step. It is also important to make sure the rules are concrete and easy to apply. Otherwise, they risk turning into platitudes. "Don't interrupt" is a better simple rule than "Create a respectful environment in meetings".
Rules need to be improved over time, as you learn more and as situations change. We improve rules by taking time to reflect on what works and what doesn't work. Often time, this reflection does not need to be explicitly focused on improving the rules. Just creating the time and space for reflection is often enough to cause improvement over time. We can also improve our rules by doing related by different activities. This cross pollination can help bring a fresh perspective to old activities and rules. Pursuing various ways to learn can also help us improve them more quickly. This might look like including formalized education on a topic with pursuing different types of experience.
Sometimes, it is not enough to incrementally improve rules. When the context changes dramatically enough, then it may be time to reset the rules completely. When this happens, mindlessly sticking to the old rules can be worse than having no rules at all because people. This chapter was short on substance, but one useful observation the authors made is that once you decide to change the rules, it is generally better to change them all at once rather than to try to introduce them slowly. That generally ends up getting you in a situation where you have two competing sets of rules which generally ends up confusing.
April 5, 2020
“You have to work hard to get your thinking clear, to make it simple� Steve Jobs
Are you finding your professional life, social life, and personal life, drowning in the increasing complexity of a modern world? Do you dream of becoming the subject of a Rockwell painting? Wistfully imaging some romanticized simpler past? If so, Simple Rules will not help you. However, if you are hunting for a more efficient way to combat the complexity of solving problems and deciding in the real-world, Simple Rules - How to Thrive in a Complex World might be the trick.
“Simple rules (are) the rules of thumb that people and organizations use to make decisions and take action quickly�
This book is an antithesis to the idea that you can solve the complexity problem with complex solutions. Simple Rules, as described by authors and strategic educators Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt, are adaptable, personalized, and simplified guidelines you can create and use to tackle the complexities inherent in the world.
“For those who wield the power of simple rules, complexity is not destiny�
Simple Rules follows the tried and tested model of anecdote + theory + explanation = solution, that makeup 99% of the books on the business strategy and thinking shelves. This book is not breaking any new literary ground here. However, Simple Rules offers some material that you would be wise to consider. Demonstrating that there is a time and a place in which a more user-friendly and elegant style of solution finding might be just the thing.
The argument is that increasing complexity is the new normal. To thrive in this environment, we need to be flexible, opportunistic, creative, specific and nimble in our thinking and our approaches. Simple Rules offer a clever and somewhat contrarian look and making better decisions. It shows how through their application we are better suited to make sound judgments while freeing ourselves from the rigidity of overbearing decision-making frameworks.
If you are looking for a new way to think about solving problems, the choice is ‘simple�, (too much? Probably� but this book is still worth a gander)
Overall score: 3.3 / 5.0
In a Sentence: a book about a simpler way to solve complex problems, we’d all like that, wouldn’t we?
Are you finding your professional life, social life, and personal life, drowning in the increasing complexity of a modern world? Do you dream of becoming the subject of a Rockwell painting? Wistfully imaging some romanticized simpler past? If so, Simple Rules will not help you. However, if you are hunting for a more efficient way to combat the complexity of solving problems and deciding in the real-world, Simple Rules - How to Thrive in a Complex World might be the trick.
“Simple rules (are) the rules of thumb that people and organizations use to make decisions and take action quickly�
This book is an antithesis to the idea that you can solve the complexity problem with complex solutions. Simple Rules, as described by authors and strategic educators Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt, are adaptable, personalized, and simplified guidelines you can create and use to tackle the complexities inherent in the world.
“For those who wield the power of simple rules, complexity is not destiny�
Simple Rules follows the tried and tested model of anecdote + theory + explanation = solution, that makeup 99% of the books on the business strategy and thinking shelves. This book is not breaking any new literary ground here. However, Simple Rules offers some material that you would be wise to consider. Demonstrating that there is a time and a place in which a more user-friendly and elegant style of solution finding might be just the thing.
The argument is that increasing complexity is the new normal. To thrive in this environment, we need to be flexible, opportunistic, creative, specific and nimble in our thinking and our approaches. Simple Rules offer a clever and somewhat contrarian look and making better decisions. It shows how through their application we are better suited to make sound judgments while freeing ourselves from the rigidity of overbearing decision-making frameworks.
If you are looking for a new way to think about solving problems, the choice is ‘simple�, (too much? Probably� but this book is still worth a gander)
Overall score: 3.3 / 5.0
In a Sentence: a book about a simpler way to solve complex problems, we’d all like that, wouldn’t we?
May 23, 2021
One of the better business books. I'm a Rules person by nature, so this book feeds my confirmation bias. It's typical of the genre showing mostly success stories from business that accidentally used the principles the author is promulgating and drawing conclusions that may or may not be warranted.
What would have been immensely helpful is a comparison between one business that did it right and three more businesses that did it wrong. I found the section on creating Simple Rules to be moderately helpful, but would have benefited from seeing more ways jumping into crafting Rules hinders business rather than helps it.
As an instructional designer I have several sets of simple rules I use. The first is when bidding on a job where I ask:
- Who is the Audience?
- What do we want them to do that they are not doing now?
- How will we know when they are doing it right?
- How will this improve business performance?
My four simple questions/rules follow an ABCD formula: Audience, Behavior, Condition, Degree. Once I have these questions answered, I then follow the ADDIE formula of instructional design which is also a set of simple rules.
I have a client right now saying, "We need a set of Simple Rules" because someone in the organization has read the book and thinks its a good idea, but I'm not sure the client has. The need is obvious, but I'm curious to see how eager the client is to follow the PROCESS for crafting simple rules rather than simply jumping to an outcome.
We'll see.
What would have been immensely helpful is a comparison between one business that did it right and three more businesses that did it wrong. I found the section on creating Simple Rules to be moderately helpful, but would have benefited from seeing more ways jumping into crafting Rules hinders business rather than helps it.
As an instructional designer I have several sets of simple rules I use. The first is when bidding on a job where I ask:
- Who is the Audience?
- What do we want them to do that they are not doing now?
- How will we know when they are doing it right?
- How will this improve business performance?
My four simple questions/rules follow an ABCD formula: Audience, Behavior, Condition, Degree. Once I have these questions answered, I then follow the ADDIE formula of instructional design which is also a set of simple rules.
I have a client right now saying, "We need a set of Simple Rules" because someone in the organization has read the book and thinks its a good idea, but I'm not sure the client has. The need is obvious, but I'm curious to see how eager the client is to follow the PROCESS for crafting simple rules rather than simply jumping to an outcome.
We'll see.
December 25, 2016
Copy of my review from:
In the recent top rated book, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World , Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt offer that, “When many parties must work together, simple trumps complex� (p. 44). This is a beautiful fit for the future of work, a future made up of complex work, performed in complex ways. Freelancers, contractors, and global project work, all intermingle with traditional organizational forms. Rather than try and understand all the complexities yourself, partner with those who do -- and do it in a simple way. By simple in this instance I mean push decision-making to where the information is, close to the work itself.
Complex Work and Partnerships Require Simple Rules and Direct Connections to Feedback
This is such a strong idea that Sull and Eisenhardt use it as the conclusion of their book:
..simple rules work because they provide a threshold level of structure while leaving ample scope to exercise discretion....
Close to the facts on the ground, individuals can draw on their judgment and creativity to manage risks and seize unexpected opportunities. The latitude to exercise discretion not only makes simple rules effective, it makes them attractive. People [and organizations, my addition here, but also covered in the book] thrive when given the opportunity to apply their judgment and creativity to the situations they face from day to day. And if they benefit from simple rules, they are more likely to use them and use them well" (p. 228).
The “threshold level of structure� is what keeps the ground-level decision making from just being tactical. Key is that the structure is understood and committed to across all actors. Nilofer Merchant talks about the value of co-creating strategy so that the vision and the tactics are tied across all levels of the work from inception. Co-creation can support commitment and innovation. Sull and Eisenhardt provide detailed notes on the value of working throughout the organization as rules are created -- and are clear that strategy and execution cannot be separated.
The Future of Work Is Complex, But the Underlying Technologies Can Help
Internet enabled collaboration, product development supported by real-time data, The Internet of Things. These all mean we spend more time and effort checking and connecting with data and others throughout our days, and nights. The process is not simple, but it could be simpler. Some organizations have found ways to leverage the complexity of data in ways that simplify the work.
Pulse Mining Systems
Pulse Mining Systems provides integrated business management tools to mining companies. (I’m looking forward to writing a more historical piece remarking on how much mining has taught us about management.) They offer resources for operations, human resources, marketing, and more. The key is that they don’t do it alone -- and their tools aren’t meant just for executives or data scientists.
I spoke with Rob Parvin, then their visualization and analytics manager. I was looking for an example of the value of offering access to operational data to people doing the work, but I found much more. Yes, he described examples where mines with five kilometer conveyors are progressing from manual reporting to real time, sensor-based, feedback to the shift managers. Yes, maintenance and staffing decisions are made with better data. (More on those soon.) But what surprised me was how they were creating these opportunities.
Pulse Partners to Co-Innovate
Pulse partners to simplify both their strategic decision making and how they then take action on that strategy. They co-innovate -- work with their strategic clients -- to identify the specific information needed by the client for decision making (going for simple rather than complex), key metrics, and prototyping. The product is eventually rolled out as a general offering -- but with the knowledge that it’s a tool that’s valuable in the industry and works. The implicit rule is that products are co-developed rather than created away from the work itself. They’ve been able to create early versions in as little as three weeks.
Pulse is able to move this quickly because they’ve partnered with two analytics companies rather than trying to build out their own capabilities (implicit rule: Don’t reinvent the wheel). They work with Birst (see an earlier mention here) and Tableau to provide analytics and visualization building blocks that are rapidly prototyped and tested in the field. The complexity is managed by focusing on pre-built, reusable capabilities. The partners are bound by a common interest in answering operational questions.
In prior posts I’ve written about how we can lead by letting go (of old school management techniques), but that creates an image of chaos for some. Instead, let’s think about a structured handoff of responsibility. We are unlikely expert in all the areas where we need expertise. Pulse has found like-minded partners. SAP has done the same with their co-innovation labs. Each seems to have developed simple rules of organization to handoff pieces of the innovation process to partners with appropriate skills.
My Own Simple Rules
Rereading Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, and considering the issues in the context of our quickly changing work environment, has inspired me to think about my own simple rules. I work with a variety of audiences interested in designing organizations for innovation and offer a process for creating designs unique to their settings (I’m in full agreement that the local creation of the rules is an important piece of the process). That said, I think there are a few rules many can work with and I share them here in hope that you will help me improve them.
Base decisions on data, with decision makers as close to the work as possible.
Build teams with diverse skills, but common interests - highlight the interest.
Bundle similar work, and where possible, pass off to automation.
Be transparent and pay attention to what others are sharing with you.
Sull and Eisenhardt use the second half of their book to discuss how to refine and improve your rules. The above are just a start for me, are they also an interesting start for you?
In the recent top rated book, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World , Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt offer that, “When many parties must work together, simple trumps complex� (p. 44). This is a beautiful fit for the future of work, a future made up of complex work, performed in complex ways. Freelancers, contractors, and global project work, all intermingle with traditional organizational forms. Rather than try and understand all the complexities yourself, partner with those who do -- and do it in a simple way. By simple in this instance I mean push decision-making to where the information is, close to the work itself.
Complex Work and Partnerships Require Simple Rules and Direct Connections to Feedback
This is such a strong idea that Sull and Eisenhardt use it as the conclusion of their book:
..simple rules work because they provide a threshold level of structure while leaving ample scope to exercise discretion....
Close to the facts on the ground, individuals can draw on their judgment and creativity to manage risks and seize unexpected opportunities. The latitude to exercise discretion not only makes simple rules effective, it makes them attractive. People [and organizations, my addition here, but also covered in the book] thrive when given the opportunity to apply their judgment and creativity to the situations they face from day to day. And if they benefit from simple rules, they are more likely to use them and use them well" (p. 228).
The “threshold level of structure� is what keeps the ground-level decision making from just being tactical. Key is that the structure is understood and committed to across all actors. Nilofer Merchant talks about the value of co-creating strategy so that the vision and the tactics are tied across all levels of the work from inception. Co-creation can support commitment and innovation. Sull and Eisenhardt provide detailed notes on the value of working throughout the organization as rules are created -- and are clear that strategy and execution cannot be separated.
The Future of Work Is Complex, But the Underlying Technologies Can Help
Internet enabled collaboration, product development supported by real-time data, The Internet of Things. These all mean we spend more time and effort checking and connecting with data and others throughout our days, and nights. The process is not simple, but it could be simpler. Some organizations have found ways to leverage the complexity of data in ways that simplify the work.
Pulse Mining Systems
Pulse Mining Systems provides integrated business management tools to mining companies. (I’m looking forward to writing a more historical piece remarking on how much mining has taught us about management.) They offer resources for operations, human resources, marketing, and more. The key is that they don’t do it alone -- and their tools aren’t meant just for executives or data scientists.
I spoke with Rob Parvin, then their visualization and analytics manager. I was looking for an example of the value of offering access to operational data to people doing the work, but I found much more. Yes, he described examples where mines with five kilometer conveyors are progressing from manual reporting to real time, sensor-based, feedback to the shift managers. Yes, maintenance and staffing decisions are made with better data. (More on those soon.) But what surprised me was how they were creating these opportunities.
Pulse Partners to Co-Innovate
Pulse partners to simplify both their strategic decision making and how they then take action on that strategy. They co-innovate -- work with their strategic clients -- to identify the specific information needed by the client for decision making (going for simple rather than complex), key metrics, and prototyping. The product is eventually rolled out as a general offering -- but with the knowledge that it’s a tool that’s valuable in the industry and works. The implicit rule is that products are co-developed rather than created away from the work itself. They’ve been able to create early versions in as little as three weeks.
Pulse is able to move this quickly because they’ve partnered with two analytics companies rather than trying to build out their own capabilities (implicit rule: Don’t reinvent the wheel). They work with Birst (see an earlier mention here) and Tableau to provide analytics and visualization building blocks that are rapidly prototyped and tested in the field. The complexity is managed by focusing on pre-built, reusable capabilities. The partners are bound by a common interest in answering operational questions.
In prior posts I’ve written about how we can lead by letting go (of old school management techniques), but that creates an image of chaos for some. Instead, let’s think about a structured handoff of responsibility. We are unlikely expert in all the areas where we need expertise. Pulse has found like-minded partners. SAP has done the same with their co-innovation labs. Each seems to have developed simple rules of organization to handoff pieces of the innovation process to partners with appropriate skills.
My Own Simple Rules
Rereading Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, and considering the issues in the context of our quickly changing work environment, has inspired me to think about my own simple rules. I work with a variety of audiences interested in designing organizations for innovation and offer a process for creating designs unique to their settings (I’m in full agreement that the local creation of the rules is an important piece of the process). That said, I think there are a few rules many can work with and I share them here in hope that you will help me improve them.
Base decisions on data, with decision makers as close to the work as possible.
Build teams with diverse skills, but common interests - highlight the interest.
Bundle similar work, and where possible, pass off to automation.
Be transparent and pay attention to what others are sharing with you.
Sull and Eisenhardt use the second half of their book to discuss how to refine and improve your rules. The above are just a start for me, are they also an interesting start for you?
February 12, 2019
I have recently been pretty focused on audible fiction and since this is a nonfiction book the reading style is not quite so theatrical! But the authors of this book are quite the name droppers. Lots of well-known names both of people and businesses. And plenty of unknown names as well. The research in this book to find examples to illustrate their points must have been quite extensive. Of course when you come through thousands of businesses and individuals for examples to fit your arguments and positions, you may intentionally leave out examples that do not prove your point!
One of the current political arguments is about deregulation. The argument is that businesses are frustrated with so much regulation. The tax laws are a good example of every special interest having lobbied their own special tax law for their own special benefit.
The book is very thorough in presenting its case for making things simple. It does acknowledge that sometimes complexity is required. But it is far more certain that a good deal of simplification would often be a benefit for everyone. Businesses have volumes of personnel policies when the vast majority of their are totally honest. The book is filled with examples about how well known companies have simplified their processes and benefited at the bottom line.
One of the current political arguments is about deregulation. The argument is that businesses are frustrated with so much regulation. The tax laws are a good example of every special interest having lobbied their own special tax law for their own special benefit.
The book is very thorough in presenting its case for making things simple. It does acknowledge that sometimes complexity is required. But it is far more certain that a good deal of simplification would often be a benefit for everyone. Businesses have volumes of personnel policies when the vast majority of their are totally honest. The book is filled with examples about how well known companies have simplified their processes and benefited at the bottom line.
June 16, 2017
A classic example of a book that should have been a magazine article. I learned some interesting stuff about the White Stripes, though. While recording White Blood Cells, they stuck to five rules.
1. no blues
2. no guitar solos
3. no slide guitar
4. no covers
5. no bass
I learned that if you want to minimize the chances of having your house burglarized while you are on vacation, leave a car parked outside. I learned Tina Fey's rule for dealing with eccentric comedians. "Never tell a crazy person he's crazy." And I learned some useful tips for dealing with insomnia, including "get up at the same time every day," "if you can't fall asleep get out of bed and do something else for a while."
1. no blues
2. no guitar solos
3. no slide guitar
4. no covers
5. no bass
I learned that if you want to minimize the chances of having your house burglarized while you are on vacation, leave a car parked outside. I learned Tina Fey's rule for dealing with eccentric comedians. "Never tell a crazy person he's crazy." And I learned some useful tips for dealing with insomnia, including "get up at the same time every day," "if you can't fall asleep get out of bed and do something else for a while."
December 2, 2024
This book's premise can be found in the first few chapters, with the following ones used for examples to build up trust in the premise.
The premise is valid. We do get caught into drafting and implementing complex rules far too often, when simple ones are more efficient, easier to remember and less time-consuming.
I would have liked a "roadmap" of sorts detailing visually the path from basic simple rules to the more refined ones like the timing rules etc. because the types of rules get lost in the book. I will be doing this exercise for myself as I think it is worthwhile to check-in on where you are in your refinement of your own simple rules.
I have Annie Duke to read next. It should tie-in nicely with her approach on how to decide and when to quit.
The premise is valid. We do get caught into drafting and implementing complex rules far too often, when simple ones are more efficient, easier to remember and less time-consuming.
I would have liked a "roadmap" of sorts detailing visually the path from basic simple rules to the more refined ones like the timing rules etc. because the types of rules get lost in the book. I will be doing this exercise for myself as I think it is worthwhile to check-in on where you are in your refinement of your own simple rules.
I have Annie Duke to read next. It should tie-in nicely with her approach on how to decide and when to quit.
July 25, 2020
"Make rules that are effective in many situations."
"Don't make rules so complicated you can't remember them."
Find out:
a) What you need to get something done (critical action)
b) The things stopping you from getting that done
c) Make a rule that helps you with A and B
"Change rules if the situation calls for it."
These things are not wrong, but I feel like they fall short of profound. I'm glad I had my attention brought towards the process of lawmaking, and the book is full of great examples of people that have done that. Really the but comes across more as a statement of the obvious than anything else.
"Don't make rules so complicated you can't remember them."
Find out:
a) What you need to get something done (critical action)
b) The things stopping you from getting that done
c) Make a rule that helps you with A and B
"Change rules if the situation calls for it."
These things are not wrong, but I feel like they fall short of profound. I'm glad I had my attention brought towards the process of lawmaking, and the book is full of great examples of people that have done that. Really the but comes across more as a statement of the obvious than anything else.
January 17, 2018
I stalked out about halfway through this book. I found it repetitive and difficult to get through at the time. I may cone back to it later if something piques my interest with the material in this book.
I think there are some good concepts to deal with the constant rush if modern life. This is especially true for extremely busy individuals that feel like they just can't get a grip in everything. I feel like the book was a bit academic, so applying it to your own life and experiences will take some thinking. I suppose that's part of the point.
I think there are some good concepts to deal with the constant rush if modern life. This is especially true for extremely busy individuals that feel like they just can't get a grip in everything. I feel like the book was a bit academic, so applying it to your own life and experiences will take some thinking. I suppose that's part of the point.
May 16, 2019
This book feels simplistic while you're reading it, but the information and lessons within are POWERFUL.
The authors explain how, in the face of ever-increasing complexity, we can often benefit from developing and implementing a handful of very simple rules for ourselves. They explain what these rules look like, when they can most powerfully be used, how to develop them, and how to apply them.
You can use these rules in any area of your life, and it's worth giving this book a shot to see how it can benefit you!
The authors explain how, in the face of ever-increasing complexity, we can often benefit from developing and implementing a handful of very simple rules for ourselves. They explain what these rules look like, when they can most powerfully be used, how to develop them, and how to apply them.
You can use these rules in any area of your life, and it's worth giving this book a shot to see how it can benefit you!
June 22, 2022
2.5 stars…the authors are accurate in their assessment but the book’s approach to deconstruct random things that were successful as the end result of employing a “simple rules� was ultimately unhelpful. It would have been far more useful to hear about how such rules are successfully developed rather than lob stories at us about results from people who’ve never heard of the authors. Like my favorite band Weedeater has said, “Our songs are easy to play but hard to write.� The book acts like the magic is using simple rules, when in reality it’s actually about picking the RIGHT simple rules.
June 23, 2023
I really like the feel of this book. The writers offer a considerable amount of anecdotal material that was enjoyable to read.
There were moments when I failed to gain clarity on how the book’s concept of simple rules functions. The inference for applying simple rules is laced throughout the numerous stories given as illustrations. That said, I would have enjoyed a more direct treatment of how we implement simplified governing principles in our increasingly complex world. The subject matter is prescient for our times.
There were moments when I failed to gain clarity on how the book’s concept of simple rules functions. The inference for applying simple rules is laced throughout the numerous stories given as illustrations. That said, I would have enjoyed a more direct treatment of how we implement simplified governing principles in our increasingly complex world. The subject matter is prescient for our times.
July 31, 2017
Received a lot of insights from this, plenty of quotable, actionable advice. You just have to read actively and keep an eye out for such gems which you can inculcate in your own life to suit your own needs. Enjoyed the cases and examples. They provided the most "Aha!" moments. Overall, an insightful read. The crux is simple, but the cases elaborate upon it, which may or may not be palatable for some readers.
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