The Laws of Simplicity

To achieve sustainable business excellence is a journey that few organizations are willing to take. For those that undertake the journey, there are ways to make the complexity of continual business improvement simplified: it takes discipline.

Like any business improvement program based on best practices, a goal is to simplify processes along the way, to bring about balance, predictability and sustainability.

Here are John Maeda's "Laws of Simplicity":

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Learn: Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.
9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.