Here’s a fun corporate tradition:
Wait until everything is tangled, bloated, and slow, then pretend simplicity is a bold new idea.
Fortune just ran a piece celebrating CEOs like Jamie Dimon, Bill Anderson, and Andy Jassy for “eliminating complexity” and “flattening organizations.” Great stuff. Love the energy.
Also? Welcome to the party. Agile teams have been over here yelling about this for 20 years.
Let’s Be Clear: Complexity Isn’t the Enemy. Unnecessary Complexity Is.
Every organization adds complexity over time. It’s like organizational cholesterol.
New team? New process.
New tool? New governance.
New leader? New operating model with a trendy acronym.
At first, each one makes sense. Then, suddenly, your org chart looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher and no one can make a decision without a meeting, a pre-read, and a 12-slide deck explaining the pre-read.
Agile doesn’t solve this with vibes. It solves it with structure:
- Short feedback loops
- Empowered teams
- Decision-making close to the work
- Transparency so high it makes micromanagers sweat
What These CEOs Are Really Doing: Finally Practicing What Agile Preaches
Let’s recap:
- Jamie Dimon is asking teams to streamline, work smarter, and aim for a 10% efficiency gain.
- Bill Anderson at Bayer scrapped annual planning and reorganized around 90-day team cycles.
- Andy Jassy is increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers at Amazon to close the gap between talk and execution.
If you work in Agile, this isn’t groundbreaking. It’s Tuesday.
But it’s nice to see the C-suite finally getting the memo:
Speed doesn’t come from shouting “Go faster.” It comes from removing the stuff that slows people down.
If You Need a Committee to Approve Simplification, You’re Doing It Wrong
Here’s where most companies mess this up:
They try to simplify things using the same complex systems that caused the problem.
They form a task force. Build a SharePoint site. Launch a pilot. Appoint a VP of Simplicity.
It’s adorable. And useless.
Real simplicity looks like this:
- Cancel a meeting.
- Flatten a layer.
- Let the team own the outcome instead of the process.
- Kill a policy that no one understands but everyone follows because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
You don’t need a tiger team. You need nerve.
The Takeaway: Simplicity Isn’t a Vibe. It’s a Discipline.
Simplicity isn’t about making things look pretty.
It’s about removing drag.
It’s about unlocking flow.
It’s about giving your smartest people fewer reasons to quit.
So if you’re a leader looking for an edge in 2025?
Don’t add complexity under the disguise of “transformation.”
Strip it back.
Get closer to the work.
And build a culture where simplicity isn’t a special initiative, it’s the default.
Because if your Agile transformation has more layers than a wedding cake, it’s probably not a transformation.
It’s a stall with a logo.
