In 2020 the philosopher Gaspard Koenig spent 5 months traveling on horseback from Bordeaux to Rome, reliving the travel made by Michel de Montaigne some 440 years before. After spending time meeting and conversing with the citizens in the 15 places he visited, he was struck by a realization: citizens are overburdened by complexity. From permits to ever-changing regulations, citizens and business owners are submerged.
Gaspard Koenig attempted to run in the 2022 presidential elections in France, on a program based on the simplification of the Republic (his party is simply named Simple).
France is not a unique case, in fact, the term “norm inflation” was coined about a phenomenon observed across Canada, France, the UK and the USA. Much like with money, the overabundance of rules, norms and laws risk causing their devaluation.
Far from being limited to governments, our professional lives have become more complex as well. Lots of organizations add layers of management and processes as they grow. But it creates an excess of bureaucracy that costs the U.S. economy more than $3 trillion in lost economic output per year.
Technology promises to make our life easier but the plethora of products we used today have failed to deliver on one dimension: simplicity. Each new app and other digital product adds its own requirement of strong passwords and obscure Terms and Conditions. When Netflix started online streaming in 2007 it threatened cable companies and offered a much simpler product, only to be replaced by close to 50 different streaming services in 2022.
What’s the big deal you may ask; don’t all consumers what more?
- Complex life is tolling, overwhelming and stressful.
- Complex life is wasteful and keeps us away from more meaningful activities.
- Complex life is unfair, the insiders or wealthy benefit more.
- Like inflation, the value of each unit is decreased as there are more.
One reason for that complexity is that humans are biased towards adding, or “additive transformations”. To add is human, to remove is not.
Designers, entrepreneurs, lawmakers and managers, the world has one ask from you. When making your next product, service, norm or process, ask yourselves, what can we do less of? How about tracking the number of buttons, apps, rules or steps we remove as the indicator for success?
The world would simply thank you!
