Keep it simple, silly

“Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.” Groucho Marx

It’s 7pm on a Saturday evening. I am waiting at the check-out counter of the neighborhood Hypermarket. Serpentine queues. The air-conditioning is ineffective. I count 4 counters which are closed. Another 2 where some people in uniform are tinkering with the wires  - those are temporarily closed as well, I guess. And I watch the poor cashiers on the other 12 counters struggling with billing. Roughly 1 in 5 items are not getting scanned.  I also watch with some interest, credit cards being swiped, re-swiped, and then swiped once more. This is just great.

I look at my trolley, contemplate the pros and cons of leaving it behind and getting a life, versus hanging in there for another hour or two. In the meantime, somebody is kind enough to serve us  lukewarm Fanta in plastic cups. Here is what is happening at the backend is what I am now thinking. Or what may happen on Monday morning. The complaints will reach the CEO’s ears.  He will promptly institute 2 cross-functional committees to de-bottleneck this challenging, frequently occurring scenario. After all, if they crack this, it could be “the” game-changer for their business. Not one to miss out on adding complexity to a situation which is begging for a simple solution ,  he  will plead  for a Six Sigma Black-belt or two from the Corporate office.  To look into the COPQ, VoC, process defects, Time-traps and all that other stuff that they are supposed to look at over the next 180 days. But in the meantime, there will be some more complexity added by meaningless debates between various departments ……that elusive search for a consensus. Weighing all options. Point. Counter-point. Solution.  Ordinary alternative. Low-cost alternative.  Buy-in. Cost-benefit. Optimal solution. By the time they would have done with all that, I would be standing in the queue at some other store – hopefully the  Fanta there will be nice and cold. [caption id=“attachment_19891” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“image from impertinent.wordpress.com”]  [/caption] Why is it that obfuscation scores over elucidation so often?  A macabre fascination for complexity , double-speak and being in denial surrounds us. From Kashmir to Serbia.  And I can’t help but take a dig at those high profile group of ministers who go to airports to receive an ochre-robed  yoga-expert-turned-me-too-activist. Have we forgotten how to see things in black and white? Why these cat and mouse games – the underlying point he is making is crystal clear to all of us. Just like the underlying point being made in the Lokpal Bill . But no, we had to go right in, get all technical about drafting and language and exclusions and inclusions – while the central point lies unattended. What is so grey about corruption? About money stashed abroad?  About  an invoice that clearly shows the cost of hiring a fan  for CWG to be ridiculously unreasonable? (At this  point, we will start debating about what is “reasonable”). About women  being raped and children being killed under the guise of ethnic cleansing.  Be it Serbia. Or Kashmir. Did we really listen to Arundhati Roy, or did we just over-react, beating jingoistic drums?  Sometimes, every story does have two sides to it – and I readily acknowledge that.  But I seem to be unable to see the second side of an over-invoiced fan ; a raped helpless woman; a spokesperson of doubtful credentials taking a crystal clear stand  on some not-so-doubtful black money; a large population screaming about the atrocities committed on them by both the military as well as the extremists……where is the second side to these stories? Where is the second side to missing the obvious, constituting committees and basically screwing up an organization’s future by ensuring customers don’t give it repeat business? Where is the second side to the story of obscene bonuses to Wall Street hotshots, while entire economies go under and taxpayers money gets used to bail out institutions which are  “too big to fail”?  Why debate everything? So that the buck can be passed on to someone else while the central problem and the obvious mistakes get brushed under the carpet? What? Go ahead, complicate it. Make it so complex that the obvious escapes your attention. Ignore Thoreau, who said “Simplify Simplify”.  Sometimes we need to act before we think too much. After all, 64 years and 10 attempts at getting something right is about 63 and 9 too many.