What's That About?
By Les Mottosky
A recent meta-analysis amongst practitioners of behavioural economics found that the favourite behavioural intervention was simplification. No big surprise.
Our brains crave – maybe even require – simplicity to max out meaning. It creates a thinking environment where our comprehension is high and cognitive load is low. As a result, nearly all progress speeds-up. Simplicity produces high fluency, and when we're functioning from it, we integrate information more easily and decision-making happens.
Simplification is the great accelerator. Whether it's relationships, education or the workplace. If we want to achieve more in our careers, have more experiences, create more memories and live a deeper, richer existence, systems that remove obstacles can help us.
Simple is never easy. But it doesn't need to be hard either. Because streamlining isn't an event. It's a design opportunity.
So the way we ensure simplicity isn't through discipline. It's through systems.
Systems remove costly brain energy from the implementation equation by supporting a desired action or behaviour. This removal of the need to think about sequential next steps, simultaneously accelerates execution and frees up space for new ideas.
We know a good system simplifies work. But a great system simplifies itself. It contains the feedback loops required to keep removing friction over time.
Because friction is coming.
Richard Rohr made the profound observation that helps explain why efficiency, efficacy – and sometimes effortlessness – can come from operating within a system: 'We don't think our way into a new way of living. We live our way into a new way of thinking'.
(Swap-out the idea 'live' for 'system', and the statement remains 100% valid).
Thinking through complication inevitably leads to confusion, stalling progress.
Is there a way to avoid this? Maybe.
We often believe action comes from clarity. But more often than we'd like to admit, clarity comes from action. It hides on the other side of our first awkward attempt.
Those experiments are adaptation feedback loops. Action generates feedback. Feedback generates learning. Learning generates clarity. That clarity enables simplified action, and the cycle repeats until – with responsive leadership – it gets documented and crystallized into a system.
Most believe this is the recipe for a desired outcome:
Think → Plan → Act
But the humdinger results – those life-altering breakthroughs – come from:
Act → Learn → Simplify
Simplicity isn't the starting line. It's a documented fossil record of thousands of tiny adaptations that survived.
Individuals will think. Teams can learn. But systems? Systems remember.
TAGS: #What's That About?
Les Mottosky
Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.
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