Greg McKeown reflects on why many people, teams, and organizations avoid simplicity and focus despite clear evidence of its benefits (he cites Apple and his book Essentialism). He observes that achieving simplicity requires paying a price—a form of suffering or hard trade-offs—to reach clarity. The clip frames simplicity as effective but costly in effort and sacrifice.
I used to wonder, why is it that more people, teams, organizations don't go for simplicity and focus? Like, why not? I mean, I remember when I was first really writing Essentialism. I thought at the time Apple was in this complete resurgence, coming now, of course, depending on the day, the most valuable company in the world. But even at that time, it was so evident that this type of approach to decision making and product development leadership clearly works. And I thought, why don't people do it more? It's just so self evident that this matters. And over the years, since I get it more now, it's like there is a price to pay to get to that simplicity. I don't want to be too dramatic about it, but there's a certain kind of suffering that's required to get to that level of clarity.
