The Case for the Obvious

Complexity might impress, but simplicity gets things done

In 1916, Edward E. Mayo published a slim business novel called Obvious Adam. I came across it on a podcast featuring Rory Sutherland, the advertising executive, who was sharing his book recommendations. The book’s premise is obviousness: common-sense thinking and the search for simple solutions to challenges. I listened to the audiobook over the past week, and it taught me a few lessons most of us unlearn the moment our careers begin.

We are trained to equate complexity with intelligence. The clever model, the dense slide and the seven-layer framework all signal effort and expertise. The trouble is that the people on the receiving end rarely share our appetite for complication. They are ordinary people with busy schedules, or an attention span of a goldfish, so an idea that needs a long runway to land often never lands at all. Common sense, as the saying goes, is not all that common. Obvious Adam offers five tests to help us find it. They are not foolproof, but they make a sound rule of thumb.

The first test is simplicity. When a problem is properly solved, the solution tends to be simple, sometimes so simple that a whole generation has looked straight at it without seeing it. If your answer is ingenious and intricate, treat that as a warning sign rather than a badge of honour. The difficulty is psychological. A simple idea can feel too ordinary to be valuable, as though anyone could have thought of it. In practice, simplicity in processes, language and thinking does far more work than sophistication.

The second test is whether the idea fits human nature. Every plan, whether it asks people to buy something, follow a course of action or break a long-standing habit, is made or broken by how people respond to it. Your colleagues and customers are a fair cross-section of human nature, so share the idea with them early. You are not seeking instant agreement; you are checking that ordinary people understand it and can see its value. If you feel uneasy explaining it to your own team, that unease is telling you something.

The third test is to put it on paper. Write the idea in two or three paragraphs, as if explaining it to a child. If the explanation comes out long, involved and full of jargon, the idea is probably not yet obvious. Every sector has its technical vocabulary, and that is fine, but we often hide behind terminology. I have seen this repeatedly in marketing work: the colleague who has not been on the journey with you is the best judge of whether your thinking holds together. If they cannot follow it on a single page, the problem is clarity, not their attention.

The fourth test is whether the idea explodes in people’s minds. The mark of a truly obvious idea is the reaction it provokes: why didn’t we think of that before? When you present, watch the faces in the room. If you see the light come on, you have it. If you find yourself making lengthy arguments for hours, the idea has not been thought through. That said, instant recognition does not demand instant decisions. Some weaknesses only reveal themselves after a good night’s sleep.

The fifth test is timing. An idea can be obvious and still fail because its moment has passed or has not yet arrived. If the moment has gone, let the idea go. If it is early, be patient. The prime example, pun intended, is Jeff Bezos (Amazon Subscriptions & Prime): The core idea of “Amazon Prime” (unlimited free shipping for a flat annual fee) was floating around Amazon’s upper management under different names for years. Economists and internal finance teams repeatedly killed the idea because shipping costs would bankrupt the company. Bezos sat on the underlying concept until 2004, when he decided the timing was right to build customer loyalty, overriding his financial teams to launch Prime in 2005. It completely transformed modern e-commerce. Timing and simplicity work together: an idea can be timely yet too complicated, or simple yet premature.

What strikes me most about Obvious Adam is how little of it has aged. Our tools have changed beyond recognition, but human nature on the other side hasn’t. People still respond to what is clear, sensible and well-timed.