​I recall helping to build a SharePoint site for a legal knowledge system some years ago. We decided to use picture icons for the different knowledge catalogues to make the site user friendly. And we also determined that a user should be able to get to some substantial answer to a query in no more than three clicks of their mouse or keypad. We could thus take complex legal topics with inherently detailed material and make them accessible.

This is actually a recognised web site design rule described by Wikipedia as followsThe three click rule is an unofficial web design rule concerning the design of website navigation. It suggests that a user of a website should be able to find any information with no more than three mouse clicks. Another view or definition is The theory that users will abandon a website if they are unable to complete their task within 3 mouse clicks.

This functional simplicity is not easy to achieve but it repays the extra design and build effort many times over. By contrast I cannot count the number of projects designed to improve professional practices I have been involved with which foundered in a sea of complexity. The results if they ever saw the light of day were never going to be widely adopted. Potential users  were turned off from the start by the intricate interfaces weaved to do justice to the system or process.

I sometimes think this happens because a project team gets carried away in the details and forgets the objective they were set up to achieve. Instead it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy which satisfies the (sometimes increasing in number) team members but does not deliver. Perhaps it is all about keeping the big picture in mind and embracing simplicity. The people in a team who bring you back to the objective and keep seeing the wood for the trees are invaluable.

This is recognised in the context of software development projects where it even has a name -  The Software Peter Principle is used in software engineering to describe a dying project which has become too complex to be understood even by its own developers. It is well known in the industry as a silent killer of projects, but by the time the symptoms arise it is often too late to do anything about it. Good managers can avoid this disaster by establishing clear coding practices where unnecessarily complicated code and design is avoided.
 
There is also a book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Again according to Wikipedia Its central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".Brooks' observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had added more programmers to a project falling behind schedule, a decision that he would later conclude had, counter-intuitively, delayed the project even further. Too many cooks spoiling an already complicated broth.
 
The same is absolutely true in communications. I recall a Queen’s Counsel dictating a letter to me over the phone in a complex dispute off the top of his head, which was impressive in itself. The draft was perfect in its simplicity, elegant and sticking to the point. There were no hostages to fortune. By contrast I have often seen over the last few years what should be simple communications over complicated to the point where at best they cause confusion and at worst defeat their purpose.

Winston Churchill is one of the best exponents of simplicity in writing. On August 9, 1940, with the Battle of Britain raging in the skies above England, Churchill wrote the memo to his staff I set out at the start of this blog encouraging them to write shorter and more concise reports avoiding “woolly phrases” such as “consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect….."

Ultimately you need to have the users or audience in mind as you build systems or processes or more generally communicate. Abraham Lincoln said “When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two-thirds of the time thinking about what they want to hear and one-third thinking about what I want to say.”

As Leonardo Da Vinci commented “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

 
 
 

Before the eighteenth century most people who were not in the church or the army or navy lived or worked in local communities, many on or in connection with the land. Then as agriculture was industrialised as a part of the agricultural revolution many people moved to cities – see this Wikipedia entry Rural Flight which statesThe onset of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the late 19th century removed many of these checks [on moving to cities]. As food supplies increased and stabilized and industrialized centres arose, cities began to support larger populations, sparking the start of rural flight on a massive scale. The United Kingdom went from having 20% of the population living in urban areas in 1800 to more than 70% by 1925.
 
Around the same time in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came the industrial revolution. Another Wikipedia article on the Office comments As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking, rail, insurance, retail, petroleum, and telegraphy grew dramatically, requiring many clerks, and as a result more office space was assigned to house their activities.
 
By the early twentieth century many workers were employed in large offices often in cities, many commuting to and from their homes in the suburbs or further afield using ever improving road and rail transport links. This article suggests that in 2005 There are over 10 million office workers in the UK. They work in over 200 million square metres of office space representing a capital investment of more than £120 billion.
 
Then came the computer revolution in offices – see this BBC article How the computer changed the office forever which says The first office computers didn't come in the 1970s and 1980s. They came at least 20 years earlier in the 1950s, and not from whizzy California, but from frumpy Hammersmith. ….It was a British tea shop and catering chain that developed the first computer for business use…..– Lyons. By contrast Today the computer is the office. Its dominant metaphor is taken from office work - it's got a desktop, files, folders, documents, a litterbin. It all seems to have happened so fast.
 
We are now part of the communication revolutionwhich has in fact been going on perhaps since the invention of the printing press in 1440 but has accelerated exponentially in the last few decades. See this article which suggests One thousand years from now, the only two things that will be remembered in the history of the time period we are living right now will be the first lunar landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969 and the development of real-time communications instantly connecting every human on earth with every other human on earth.
 
Even, before the current challenges flexible working had altered the pattern of office life – see this Regus research The Workplace Revolution – a picture of flexible working which reports In fact, over 50% of workers now report that they work outside the main office 2.5 days a week or more.
 
My son was telling me that a large US publishing house he is doing some consultancy work for started out 10 years ago with all of its employees working remotely – so in that sense they have not been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
 
I suggest as we look forward positively to professional business after the current global crisis that a fifth mobile working revolutionwill take place as working at home as an alternative to the office becomes cemented in our work patterns. Why pay for expensive office space when many professionals will be happier and more productive working for some (not all) their time at home?
 
See this Guardian article Covid-19 could cause permanent shift towards home working commenting Covid-19 could permanently shift working patterns as companies forced to embrace remote working by the pandemic find that their employees do not want to return to the office once the closures are lifted.
 
I suggest that we will need to recognise and plan for this ongoing fifth revolution in our professional life. Here are some great quotes about the need to embrace this sort of change.
 
“There is nothing wrong with change...if it is in the right direction.”—Winston Churchill
 
“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.”— the Japanese scholar Kakuzō Okakura in The Book of Tea
 
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”—Henry Ford
 
“Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”—Benjamin Disraeli
 
“Change before you have to.”—Jack Welch