Simple Rules Quotes

“When asked why they quit, the lapsed dieters cited complexity as the single most important reason for giving up. Simplicity is even more important when people are tired, stressed, or otherwise cognitively impaired.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Investing the time up front to clarify what will move the needles dramatically increases the odds that simple rules will be applied where they can have the greatest impact.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Imagine a book that is seven times as long as War and Peace, but without any characters, plot points, or insight into the human condition. That book is the U.S. tax code.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Too often, a company’s strategy sits on a shelf, gathering dust. A strategy that doesn’t influence critical decisions on a day-to-day basis, however, is not a strategy—it is a book report.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“(1) discover and qualify opportunities; (2) develop a pre-proposal; (3) design a solution; and (4) conduct pre-sales planning.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“When it comes to implementing a strategy of simple rules, pinpointing the precise decision or activity where rules will have the most impact is half the battle.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“three questions that are fundamental to any company’s ability to create economic value: Who will we target as customers? What product or service will we offer? How will we provide this product at a profit?”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“In a 2013 speech, President Barack Obama laid out three rules for deciding whether to launch a drone strike against a specific target. The starting point was the national security, geopolitical, and civilian-safety objectives the president hoped to achieve. Three simple rules translated these broad goals into more concrete guidelines: Does the target pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people? Are there no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat? Is there near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured? Only if the answer to all three of these questions was yes would a drone strike be authorized. The American drone program is shrouded in secrecy, and it is unclear exactly how these simple rules have been used within the chain of decision making. By virtue of their simplicity and directness, however, they could provide a useful framework to structure discussions about these very tough decisions. And there is some evidence that they are working. In 2013, the year Obama articulated these simple rules, there was a sharp decline in confirmed civilian casualties by drone strikes. The concreteness of these rules also makes communicating them, both to U.S. citizens and the international community, straightforward. The United States has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on military drones, but that will not last forever. The U.K., China, Israel, and Iran had operational military drones in 2014, while other countries, including India, Pakistan, and Turkey, have advanced development programs. By articulating and adhering to a set of principles governing the use of drones, the United States has an opportunity to shape the international standards that other countries will use to guide their decisions in the future.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“When people develop rules themselves and base them on values that matter to them, they also feel a greater sense of ownership over their rules. People are more likely to use rules devised by themselves, reflecting their own values, rather than those imposed on them by someone else. Moreover, when people invest the time to reflect on their experience and codify it into rules, they typically do so to achieve some goal that matters deeply to them, like producing a winning comedy show or successfully raising a child. If they believe the rules will help them to do a better job on something that really matters, they will use them.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“The whole point of the White Stripes,” according to founder and frontman Jack White, “is the liberation of limiting yourself.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Simple rules minimize the risk of overweighing peripheral considerations by focusing on the criteria most crucial for making good decisions.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Both flexibility and consistency have their advantages, but increasing one reduces the other.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Simple rules work best when flexibility matters more than consistency.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“The key to moving past the political impasse was shifting the debate from “Which programs should we run?” to “What simple rules should we use to decide which programs to run?”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“People are more likely to use rules devised by themselves, reflecting their own values, rather than those imposed on them by someone else.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“the best firms purposefully stay out of sync with their rivals.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Designing a railway using slime mold might seem like an esoteric illustration of learning simple rules from the experience of others, but drawing inspiration for simple rules from the animal world is not so rare. Termites, bees, and other social insects provide a particularly fertile source of simple rules. They have enough collective intelligence to accomplish complex tasks like finding nests or migrating long distances, but since each animal has little brainpower and few physical skills, their actions can often be captured by simple rules.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“In 1988 bankers from around the world met in Basel, Switzerland, to agree on international banking regulations, and published a 30-page agreement (known as Basel I). Sixteen years later, the Basel II accord was an order of magnitude larger, at 347 pages, and Basel III was twice as long as its predecessor.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Simple rules address a deeply rooted human desire for simplicity when dealing with a range of complex challenges ranging from the prosaic to the global.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Willpower, it turns out, is more like a reservoir than a river. If we deploy willpower on one decision, we have less self-control available for our next decision. Many of our worst dietary choices, for example, are made in periods of low self-control—at the end of a long day when a big glass of cabernet or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s calls out our name.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“U.S. citizens employ 1.2 million tax preparers, more than all the police and firefighters in the country combined.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Meeting complexity with complexity can create more confusion than it resolves.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Start-Up Chile (SUP)”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“they (1) removed bottlenecks to growing revenues, (2) provided benefits immediately (rather than paying off in the long term), (3) minimized up-front expenditures, and (4) reused existing resources.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Warren Weaver is not a household name, but he may be the most influential scientist you’ve never heard of, actively shaping three of the most important scientific revolutions of the last century—life sciences, information technology, and agriculture. In 1932 Weaver joined the Rockefeller Foundation to lead the division charged with supporting scientific research. Funding was scarce during the Great Depression, and the Rockefeller Foundation, with an endowment nearly twice the size of Harvard’s at the time, was one of the most important patrons of scientific research in the world. Over his three decades at the Rockefeller Foundation, Weaver acted as a banker, talent scout, and kingmaker to support the nascent field of molecular biology, a term he himself coined. Weaver had an uncanny knack for picking future all-stars. Eighteen scientists won Nobel Prizes for research related to molecular biology in the middle of the century, and Weaver had funded all but three of them.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“Compared to the comprehensive regulations of the Benedictines or Dominicans, the Jesuits’ simple rules, few in number, erred on the side of flexibility by conferring on individuals the latitude to exercise judgment.”
― Donald Sull, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World