If It’s Not Simple, It's…

Pascal Dennis, author of Getting the Right Things Done

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, "any scientist who can't explain to an eight-year-old what he's doing is a charlatan." This principle is especially true in Strategy execution, where human leadership & charisma cannot be replaced. In fact, it is my strong belief that in the age of AI, these will comprise the essential, irreplaceable app.

AI agents will eventually be able to handle many jobs, but can they define, deploy & execute Strategy? Can AI agents define Purpose in a transcendent way, such that gifted team members embrace it, and put their differences aside for a great goal? Can AI agents motivate a team to sustain its heart & fighting spirit in the face of inevitable setbacks, to keep going in spite of everything? (To be sure, the teams of the future will comprise both human and AI agents.)

"What are we trying to achieve? “How will we win - what is the logic?" In Strategy sessions, I`m a proverbial broken record. We've been taught that complexity is profound. In fact, complexity is a crude state. Simplicity marks the end of a process of refining.

The late great physicist, Richard Feynman, looked and talked like a New York City cabbie. His Caltech freshmen lectures in Physics, and all his books are classics for their simplicity & humor. How did Feynman achieve that level of clarity? Through slow, patient reflection, by turning a problem over and over in his mind until a 'simple' explanation suggested itself. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and is a process of refinement.

© 2025 Lean Pathways Inc.

In our frantic, time-starved age, that's where the shoe pinches, no? These days, who has time to turn a problem over and over in their mind? Who has the time, as Einstein did, to imagine himself riding a light beam - so as to makes sense of time and gravity and light?

Which invokes the second great law of strategy: Less is more. Knowing we'll be time-starved, please let's not over-fill our strategy plates, like teenagers at a buffet. "First we'll do this, then this and this and that over there. Oh, and then we'll..."

Design Thinking & Lean Experimentation, core Innovation methodologies, force you to simplify and clarify your offering. Once we’ve answered a series of core questions around the customer, we work our way up the ‘hockey stick’ by defining & validating a series of ‘minimal’ offerings.

Similarly, in strategy, we want to define, deploy & validate our 'minimum viable plan', monitoring what happens, and adjusting as the inevitable 'known, and unknown, unknowns' arise.

Breakthrough entails walking up the stairs in the fog, continually making & easy quick experiments, most of them yielding a negative result. If it’s not simple, it’s BS.

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS To learn more about my Strategy Execution program, Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World, feel free to drop me a line.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Igniting New Growth – Aristotle’s Two Worlds, Part 2
Igniting New Growth – Aristotle’s Two Worlds
Innovation Does Not Begin with Technology
Getting the Right Things Done in a Digital World

Reprise: Less is More

By Pascal Dennis

Our dear readers may know my favorite proverb – which applies in management, art and science.

Here’s a fine HBR piece on how “less is more” applies in life.

Tough to do for us hyper-active, Type A, multi-tasking bozos, but we have to try.

And you know, it’s getting easier, and I’m just as productive.

My checkpoint is my family. “How am I doing, kids?”

“You’re doing better, Dad!”

“How am I doing Pamela, my dear?”

“You’re doing better, although you’re still a pain…”

Not exactly a rave, but I’ll take it.

Best regards,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Less is More - in Regulation Too

By Pascal Dennis

Ontario's sad, stagnant energy sector is a good example of what happens when you take the customer out of the equation.

It'd take the Marx Brothers to do justice to the current farce. (Do a brief Google search & you'll see what I mean)

Unscrupulous politicians have exploited the public's suspicion of commerce to erect a stifling web of regulation and special interest.

As a result, among other things, the province is forced to sell highly subsidized power, at a loss, to other jurisdictions. Taxpayers are, of course, stuck with the bill.

Mama mia...and that's not even the worst of it.

Commerce - suppliers & customers interacting in a complex, self-managing web -- is portrayed as a dodgy endeavour, and one requiring oversight by powerful mandarins.

"You need US to protect you from those guys..."

Greece is an extreme example of this syndrome.

To build a hotel in Greece, for example, you need the approval of half a dozen ministries, several unions etc.

You often need a "fakelaki" (small envelopes full of cash) to grease the wheels. Even then it takes years.

That's why the great hotel companies tend to avoid Greece - and why the unemployment rate exceeds 25%.

Things are not as bad in Ontario - yet...

Don't want to be misunderstood.

We need regulation.

Good rules level the playing field, and curb excesses (monopoly, tragedy of the commons, and so on).

But in regulation, as in the business, design and art, less is more.

Here's the corresponding Lean mental model:

We need simple, visual standards for all important things.

Best,

Pascal