‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,’ so chimes Capitec ever so vigorously in their bid to sell the dream of convenient banking. ‘Keep things simple,’ says an enthused Richard Branson – a renown billionaire entrepreneur who has dismantled the status quo with every morsel of his entrepreneurial bone.
Why is Richard Branson telling us to keep things simple? Why can’t we forage in our sea of complexity and tear done all of the blocks one block at a time in an attempt to pave way for a clearer labyrinthine maze? Why not just take complex analogies and swim in the sea of jargon-charged utopia and call it a day?
You know the answer : you want your message to be communicated to as many people as humanly possible ( 7 billion anyone?). Your jargon, if not broken down to neat little boxes of simplicity will get lost in the land of complex ideologies.
Of course you can just decide to say ‘to hell with everybody understanding my message, I will target only those of the same ilk.’ You reason well, but you could be missing the bigger picture of garnering more folk into your fold.
Is simplicity the ultimate sophistication? Must you always keep simplicity at the fore of your mind as you search ferociously for a channel to properly articulate your thoughts and dreams?
The truth is : if you want to have a wider audience reach you must endeavour to keep your neatly packaged (or perhaps heavily convoluted) thoughts simple. Sell simplicity and convenience, and you, dynamo, are in for the kill!
Package your beautiful symphony in such a way that your unencumbered 10 year old niece can listen to it with some understanding. This is the part where you acknowledge the brilliance of a young’un who is but a decade old.
Sophistication… simplicity… marrying these two concepts together. A good match? This is you pondering, pausing and mulling over the urge to bring together two powerful concepts. ‘Why should I marry simplicity if my name is sophistication,’ you wonder.
If you are so hard-pressed for an answer I will give you one. Allow me to give you an answer to your mind-boggling question. Unionize simplicity with sophistication because never in all history – recorded and unrecorded – has the combination of simplicity and sophistication failed humanity.
Sure, we want to occasionally float into the abyss of complexity and entangled branches. You do that. Float into that damn abyss. Float away in your world of complex designs and folleys.
But…even you know that to truly capture the hearts of many (hopefully enamoured) people, you must decode the language of complexity and produce simple designs.
And so goes the question : is simplicity the ultimate sophistication? You decide.
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