Why the rush to simplicity

When things are messy, challenging or difficult, we can be impatient to make it all simple so we can tick it off and move on. It happens in meetings and workshops when the leader - meaning well, doing their best - takes what someone has said and simplifies it down to one big simple word.

The leader responds, ‘oh right, so what you’re talking about is < simple, big category word like productivity, strategy, collaboration>‘.

’No’, the person may say, that’s not quite what they were saying. Their contribution or explanation gets distilled so far ... pushed ahead to a single word, for the sake of simplicity.

But it could be too simple.

It’s like that exercise some people run in workshops: ‘What’s ONE WORD to describe today’s workshop/conference/meeting?’

Why the limit to one? One word may be easy, quick and controlling for you to put on people but it’s less effective for engagement, sensemaking and meaning making.

We may distill so far that the deeper (and intended) meaning vanishes, evaporates and is lost. Beware that by stripping things away to make it easier for you, may make contributions so vanilla... there’s no vanilla left.