A quote from Edsger Wybe Dijkstra has inspired me like few others: “Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better”.
Edsger Dijkstra
This concept has been resonating in my head and it seems to me that it describes in a simple way something that I have been living and experiencing all my life, both what I have done and what I have seen done.
Recently, a person said in a meeting I was attending, that engineers tend to overengineer when they are not 100% sure of something, which is a derivative of the phrase above. If you don’t know how to make it simpler, you overengineer, and unintentionally make it more complicated.
I have participated in purchasing processes, where engineers tend to describe in detail (almost doing the job of those who sell) everything they need, turning functional requirements into detailed requirements to the maximum.
It happens to me too, I don’t want to pretend to be clever. In many occasions I get entangled in trying to explain something, that, in reality, I don’t know how it works in detail to be able to explain it in a simple way. I can understand the concept, but not the detail and that makes my head get tangled in the explanation. It is true that here also enters, the art of presenting of which I will not talk about since I do not consider myself far from appropriate to do so, where certain people (it is clearly seen in politicians, although it is also seen in certain bosses) use their personal charisma and language to say things without real content. It’s not that they make it simple, it’s that they don’t really say anything.
I have participated in meetings where people spoke with a baroque language, mixing terms difficult to understand, in order to seem more important. In fact, some consultancies live by “renaming” different concepts older than the chair concept, to make it seem that what they say is more important… and I understand that if you want to capture attention and sell services, you have to distinguish yourself.
In one of the books I was reading, it explained this concept I am writing about here in other words. The book was about how to improve your relationships… and in one of the chapters it clearly described that if you want to capture the listener’s attention, you have to use some words (not many) that will differentiate you from the standard. He gave advice to look up synonyms in the dictionary and to get those words into everyday language.
Edsger’s phrase clearly defines how society works. It sells complexity better, even though simplicity is what is necessary.
When the simplest thing to do is simply to realize that you are starting to overengineer something and stop. Ask yourself, if you can simplify it.
In Management Consulting and in Business Schools, they talk about KISS Keep It Simple, Stupid, or “Keep it short and Simple”,… or explain it for a 10 year old kid to understand…
