Business tends to make things complicated because it's easier that way.
Making things simple is a very hard and difficult choice. Simplicity means standing for something, a risk no arm chair strategist will take. Simplicity means sticking your neck out, which most top managers will not afford to. Simplicity also means making trade-offs, a challenge which most businesses will rather not take.
So strategists make complex models, which will earn them the respect of fellow top managers , primarily because the top managers will find it difficult to understand the models (in doing so, the strategists will save their jobs).
These complex business models will be subject to everybody's interpretation within the organization and give everybody else an easy task of making something that nobody is really sure of.
So engineers will create complex products that will impress other engineers.Marketing managers will create complex briefs, advertising agencies will create complex communication etc.
So strategy execution will become a fascinating game of creating complexity. This cycle of complexity will leave a poor customer with an over-engineered product with myriad of functions that most people will never need or use.
Strategists never spend a day in the life of an ordinary customer. They cannot come to terms with the fact that ordinary people are busy and don't spend their whole day thinking about bank accounts or toothpaste. They just want something that does the job and nothing more.
However it is not easy to make strategy simple. Making strategy simple and therefore products simple is actually complicated.
First you need to make your company simple. This means simplifying not only structure and process, but also culture and mission.This means firing the strategy team and sitting with ordinary employees and customers to understand what the company really stands for. It means being ready for a round of ego-bashing with the employees and customers stating that they care two hoots about your elaborate diagrams, complex products, matrix hierarchies and abstract strategy models.
Making things simple often means starting from scratch, going to the basics. And it also means doing months of hard work and coming up with a small paragraph that describes a company's mission or its products (most managers will jump at this ridiculous suggestion...how will they justify the time spent on their time sheets? )
A good example of a company that's been 'simplified' is Philips. The company now runs just seventy businesses instead of five hundred and there are five divisions instead of fifty. Or even Unilever India , which is focusing on a few power brands.
My heart goes out to four hundred and thirty Philips business heads and scores of Unilever brand managers who have lost their fiefdom.
Who said that creating simplicity was about making easy choices !
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