
It’s a common experience, shared by top innovators and entrepreneurs and CEOs in every industry, all the time: that the further they progress in their industry, and the more they learn throughout their professional lives, the more they realise that simple is better than complicated.
When I think back to the early days of my marketing career, I can see how much I overcomplicated things. It’s inevitable, isn’t it? When you’re new you have a lot to prove, and it often feels like the best way to prove yourself is to know more obscure, complex stuff than your peers. But then time went on, and gradually I realised that the best results usually come from the simplest strategies. That’s not to say that new, innovative, out-of-the-box ideas are bad; but they have to be grounded in a simple understanding of what it is you’re actually trying to do.