Monday
Dec262011
U n r a v e l e d = S i m p l e
Mike NatalizioLet’s face it: the world is complex, and it’s not getting simpler any time soon. Running a business today is like battling a giant, tangled knot that is impossible to separate – the minute you try to free one thread, you end up tightening the knot somewhere else.
The theme of my manifesto is “unraveled.” It’s about taking this complex business environment, accepting it, and learning to stop pulling at the threads that just tighten the grip of the knot. By removing the distractions, tuning out the noise, and taking the time to just think, business can be surprisingly simple.
A lot of the complexity in our world stems from Web 2.0 and the explosive proliferation of products and services. But here’s something I’ve noticed: we seem to thrive on making things more complex than they really are. Do we really intend to make things unclear and confusing? With a mixture of acronyms, business jargon, and senseless buzz words, we don’t actually WANT you to know what we’re saying…we just want you to think that WE know what we’re saying.
This isn’t just the work of individuals. The truth is, a lot of industries don’t really want you to unravel them [the insurance industry is one of the guiltiest of this]. The complexity they generate creates a mystique around what they do…allowing them to think they’re cashing in on your confusion. There is real money to be made is in navigating the complexity and making it simple.
This phenomenon is what motivated me to write my manifesto. When it came time to writing the manifesto I found many of the ten principles bearing down on me as pushed toward completion. Looking back it really wasn’t all that complex it just needed a bit of unraveling.
;)
The theme of my manifesto is “unraveled.” It’s about taking this complex business environment, accepting it, and learning to stop pulling at the threads that just tighten the grip of the knot. By removing the distractions, tuning out the noise, and taking the time to just think, business can be surprisingly simple.
A lot of the complexity in our world stems from Web 2.0 and the explosive proliferation of products and services. But here’s something I’ve noticed: we seem to thrive on making things more complex than they really are. Do we really intend to make things unclear and confusing? With a mixture of acronyms, business jargon, and senseless buzz words, we don’t actually WANT you to know what we’re saying…we just want you to think that WE know what we’re saying.
This isn’t just the work of individuals. The truth is, a lot of industries don’t really want you to unravel them [the insurance industry is one of the guiltiest of this]. The complexity they generate creates a mystique around what they do…allowing them to think they’re cashing in on your confusion. There is real money to be made is in navigating the complexity and making it simple.
This phenomenon is what motivated me to write my manifesto. When it came time to writing the manifesto I found many of the ten principles bearing down on me as pushed toward completion. Looking back it really wasn’t all that complex it just needed a bit of unraveling.
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