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Who Decided to Make Everything so complicated?

February 15th, 2008 | by Marcus Smith |

Is it just me or is the world becoming too complicated? When I say complicated I don’t mean in the sense of advancement. It’s great that we experience growth in technology, education, and other important aspects of life.

My problem lies with the notion that you are somehow “smarter” if you make things sound ridiculously complicated.

Example 1

Case and point. I was at an all day seminar for small business owners last summer. Some of it was pure fluff and some of it was quality information. The first presenter got things going with a semi moving speech about being Super Excellent. A good number of his principles were spot on and correct. I agree that in this life you must be persistent, knowledgeable, and slightly crazy if you want to be wildly successful. Just as I was beginning to enter my Super Excellent zone he said something that snapped me out of my trance.
“If you really want to intrigue your customers say things in a way they won’t understand. That way they’ll keep coming back!”

What??

I don’t know too many people that will be drawn in by someone who speaks in tongue twisting parables that they don’t understand. Speaking over people’s heads is wasteful and it never ever gets the message across. Plain English gets the job done just fine.

Example 2

A former co-worker of mine was the absolute king of the corporate tongue twisters. In 10 short years he’d climbed through the ranks to make the position of Senior Manager. He wasn’t shy about sharing that information one bit. He was one of those people that puffed his chest out and flashed his blackberry to prove he was important. Needless to say he wasn’t well received.

One day we were in a meeting discussing our operation. The point was raised that some of our facilities shared similar qualities and could work together to create a more efficient operation. In his best big wig voice he puffed out his chest and said “The cross-functional synergies have been running through my mind for some time now”.

What??

That’s a very interesting way to say “the two facilities that are across the street from each other should put freight on the same truck”. I don’t really know if that’s a “cross-functional synergenastic” relationship.

Example 3

The fitness industry is terrible about making things more complicated than necessary (probably more so than any other industry). At any given time there are 25 different diets, 50 different supplements, 75 different workouts, and 100 different people telling you how to get the same result.

Do the math and that’s 25*50*75*100 = 9,375,000 ways to burn fat and build muscle. No wonder people have a hard time seeing results! It’s pretty daunting to keep up with 9 million options (at least it would be for me). I don’t know how things got this way but it needs to stop.

Do we really need 9 million ways to move more and eat less?

Do we?

Conclusion

We’re living in an age where making things sound outlandishly complicated will get you everywhere. Pretty soon the color crayon yellow will have the number wavelength frequency on the crayon instead of the color. I bet the kids will love that.

Since I’m having so much fun I’ve decided to throw in my own big word for good measure. So I’d like to close with my profound word of wisdom “gobbledegookiewoogie”. It means “I’m trying to make this nonsense sound confusing as possible”.

Did it work?

For more of the same check out my blog here: Never Settle For Less