Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage in a World of More, Better, Faster (Hardcover)

by William D. Jensen (Author) "We've all experienced simplicity in our hearts, homes, and history..." (more)
Key Phrases: simpler companies, behavioral communication model, simpler company, Net Geners, Corporate America, Message Map (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Scary fact: Business information doubles about every three years. In other words, if your job is complex now, in three years you'll have twice as much noise to sift through just to get your work done. Bill Jensen makes no bones about it: Making a job simpler is very hard work, and it's getting harder all the time. But he believes it's possible, and in Simplicity, he lays out concrete steps for managers to follow. For example, he offers a five-step process for launching a new project: Know which few things are important; consider how people will feel when you move forward on these things; use the right tools; create expectations and then manage those expectations; and create a "teachable view" of what you're trying to achieve.

If you consider all five of these building blocks before launching a new project, you should be able to overcome one of the biggest problems workers have with their jobs: too much information, with too little filtering. In fact, Jensen says, about 80 percent of business communication--meetings, e-mails, presentations, whatever--has a major problem: the information doesn't require action, or it requires action but there are no consequences of doing nothing. These building blocks can be applied to every form of communication and, most important, can be used as a formatting device to describe projects from start to finish quickly on a single sheet of paper. That'll get anyone's attention, from the boss on down to the people who actually have to do the work the project requires. It doesn't get any simpler than that. --Lou Schuler

From Library Journal
Jensen, president and CEO of the Jensen Group (a change and communication consulting firm), believes that most workers suffer from "cognitive overload"--too many choices and a lack of direction. This book presents the results of a survey of more than 2500 people in 460 organizations, along with a plan of action for business leaders. Disappointingly, Jensen applies his model of "know, feel, use, do, and succeed" unsuccessfully across several chapters. It is particularly jarring, in a book about simplicity, to find such a cluttered layout; the pages are filled with blocks of oversized type, notes, different typefaces, sidebars, and other distractions. Likewise, his suggestions are sometimes hard to follow, e.g., "For more help, reread anything relating to tools and support in the last three chapters"; indications of particular page ranges would have been far more helpful. Recommended only for comprehensive business collections and large libraries where demand warrants.
-A.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (January 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073820210X
• ISBN-13: 978-0738202105
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,029,541 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

107 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epiphanies Are Nice: Lets Get Real & Basic, February 13, 2000

By	Tony DiMarco (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews

I look at some of these reviews and it sounds like Simplicity set out to cure world hunger and reinvent all work. Maybe for some people, it does that. Not me. I'm just trying to do my best each day, make a difference, and spend more time with my kids. And I love this book.

Here's my take: Buy enough copies of Simplicity for everyone in your company. Not because it'll cure all of today's complicated craziness. But because it's real. It's basic. It's common sense made unbelievably useful. The tools and ideas the author offers involve day-to-day challenges: How to communicate differently...(the behavioral communication model has already helped me immensely)...How to use time effectively. How to help others navigate all the noise.

Buy this book because, as Jensen says, it's about the most basic thing that ties all of us together. Each of us gets only 1440 minutes each day. Simplicity is about changing how you and I use those minutes.

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What One Author Learned from YOU, June 24, 2005

By	Bill Jensen "author of Simplicity" (Morristown, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage in a World of More, Better, Faster (Paperback)

This is a story about the power of you. Keep doing what you do even when authors don't like it. Especially when we don't! (Exception: Those reviews that trash a book just for the sake of trashing it or just to promote the reviewer's agenda. Thankfully, most of you ignore those kind of reviews when making a purchasing decision.)

Simplicity was my first book. I got a few things right. And its sales and most of its reviews reflect that. (Thank you!) I got a few things wrong - very wrong - and the biggest critiques consistently reflect that. So I've tried to learn from you and bring those lessons into my future work. For example:

* The biggest, dumbest mistake I made in Simplicity was that Form Did Not Follow Function. I thought it was cool to have a layout that looked like a bulletin-board - where you could jump here and there, reading small snippets of text at a time. Most of the reviews that are negative focused on this obvious-to-all-but-me flaw. A couple of examples: "Great idea in a tough to navigate format."..."Not simple to read: This book did not live up to the title - the page layout and design is complex..."

You guys were right. I was wrong. Big time. Mea culpa. In my next efforts, I have paid a lot more attention to the Form Follows Function Dept.

* Especially in business/personal effectiveness books: Readers want How-To's! You're thinking "these ideas are great for all the people featured in the book, but how do **I** put them into practice?" The other cluster of critiques targeted this area as a weakness. I did put tools in there, but, for some, there weren't enough specific examples and how-to's: "This book never got past the 'whats' and 'whys' of simplicity...", "Too much mumbo jumbo."

Again, for some-but-not-all of you, I could have done a better job on guiding you through the how-to's of practical application.

At least, on this point, it wasn't too late to learn! Ben50 wrote in his one-star review: "The only way i would switch for a 5 star, if the author read this (and i believe he is very competent) is that he rewrites a second book or this book with a lot of case studies and clear explanation of why it works.... With this, the book could be a must."

Ben, I heard you! And to everyone like him, check out The Simplicity Survival Handbook: 32 Ways to Do Less and Accomplish More. This is that follow-up book! (In my humble-yet-biased opinion, much better than Simplicity for how-to's cuz that's the Handbook's entire focus!)

*** BOTTOM-LINE: While it's not always fun for authors to learn in a very public forum like this, the Power of You is amazing! This kind of open and transparent feedback loop improves our work and informs what's available to you. Of course, there are caveats I'd love to throw in...(some reviews of my work and of other people's books I've loved seem like the reviewer never even read the book or paid attention to the author's intent)...but that's just normal personal-justification creeping in. (One final mea culpa for occasionally being semi-normal.) Overall, I am thrilled that we all have this forum, that you have taken some of your valuable time to contribute to the debate, and that - if authors are willing to listen and learn - you have created a most amazing Virtual School for Authors! Thank you!

50 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simplicity is Business 2.0. GET IT !, April 28, 2000

By	Thomas Dixon (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews

Building upon a previous review: This book is Cluetrain 2.0, Wheatley/Leadership 2.0, Petzinger/Pioneers 2.0, Tapscott/Digital 2.0, Godin/Permission 2.0! Yet Jensen isn't trying to create the "next big or new idea."

What makes Simplicity Business 2.0 is that it's practical. He takes many of the big ideas around us, and answers "where do we go from here?"

He details what we need to think about if we are to leverage the Net in a world that's already on choice and info overload. He covers how to communicate effectively, organize one's thinking for faster implementation, storytelling as a business tool, even how to listen and delete most of what is shoveled at us. Jensen also focuses on the needs of Net Geners -- what tomorrow's pioneers will demand of our organizations. The entire book is about what it will take get permission, time and attention from the people who do the day-to-day work.

Simplicity is about how our companies need to change so all our big ideas *actually work*. Buy one copy of your favorite new-big idea book. Get LOTS of copies of this book and give them to everyone you know!