We didn’t set out to make things complex. We set out to say yes.
Yes to new product lines. Yes to customer requests. Yes to ideas from smart team members. And slowly, almost invisibly, yes turned into too much.
The creep is quiet. One product becomes three. Three becomes nine. Nine becomes seventeen, each with slightly different specs, pricing models, or service workflows. The goal was to grow, to expand, to capture the opportunity in front of us. But without realizing it, our team was spending more time managing exceptions than executing. Our systems no longer worked. Our quoting became slower. Our fulfillment messier. What had once been a sharp spear became a tangled net.
You have fallen into the trap of complexity.
And you’re not alone.
In my own business, we made the same mistake. We tried to offer too many services. We tried to serve all the industries. Instead of building slowly and clearly, we launched a menu. CFO work. Bookkeeping. Dashboards. Courses. Templates. Community. Coaching. Each one sounded good. Each one felt like growth.
But what it actually did was spread our team thin and confuse our customers. Who were we? What were we really great at? Internally, we couldn’t answer those questions clearly. And if we couldn’t do it internally, who would actually be able to tell externally? That was the problem.
Because complexity’s most dangerous cost isn’t margin erosion. It’s clarity erosion. Clarity in the perception others have of you and clarity in your ability to execute on a plan.
Once clarity is gone, the rest falls like dominoes.
Why Clarity is the Real Loss
Clarity is what lets a team focus. It lets employees make fast decisions. It lets customers understand your offer. It lets you, as the leader, allocate your time and capital with confidence.
Complexity robs you of that.
And worse, it does it quietly.
You don’t notice when you add the one-off service. Or the extra approval step. Or the new tool. Each decision is justifiable on its own. But in aggregate, the cognitive load multiplies.
Suddenly, your team isn’t sure what the priority is. You’re in meetings deciding whether this scenario fits Policy A or B. No one knows where the source of truth lives. Sales are down, but you don’t know which lever to pull, because there are too many and you don’t have the tracking in place to know which is working and which isn’t.
You get stuck.
And that stuck-ness creates real financial consequences:
- Slower quoting and fulfillment = missed revenue.
- More layers and tools = rising costs.
- Employee burnout = higher turnover and increased hiring cost.
- Delayed decisions = missed opportunities.
But again, the root of all of it is clarity. You’ve lost the ability to push one thing down the hill with focused force.
Why Complexity Creeps In
Complexity is a natural byproduct of growth. As things succeed, we add. We add people, products, procedures. We say yes to edge cases. We build for exceptions. We avoid saying no because every new thing looks like an opportunity.
But more is not always better. More is sometimes just more.
Good ideas can still be bad decisions if they dilute your clarity.
That’s what makes complexity so tricky. It feels like progress. It’s not obviously wasteful. It wears a disguise of innovation.
But underneath, it’s weight.
So how do you spot it? How do you prune it? How do you protect against it?
How to Spot It
So how do you spot it? Here are three diagnostic questions I like to use:
- Does this multiply or focus our efforts? Multiplying sounds good until you realize it means scattering your attention across too many fronts. Focus lets you apply concentrated pressure in one direction, which is what creates traction and momentum.
- Does this add clarity or confusion? People rarely admit something adds confusion. But if you walk away with more open questions than answers, more “what about” scenarios than clear next steps, it’s a good signal something is muddy.
- What would happen if we stopped doing this tomorrow? If the answer is “probably nothing,” that’s a red flag. Every business is doing unnecessary things. If you can’t find any, it means you haven’t looked hard enough. Complexity loves to hide in things that feel necessary but aren’t. Test that assumption by stopping tasks or reporting for a period of time to see what happens.
How to Fight Complexity
You fight complexity not with brilliance, but with discipline.
- Prune regularly. Review your product lines, internal tools, and processes every quarter. Ask what can be cut.
- Default to no. Not because you’re closed-minded, but because every yes costs something, usually clarity. This is less about actually saying no, but more about understanding the why and the secondary and tertiary impacts.
- Simplify reporting. Fewer KPIs. Fewer dashboards. Focus your financial and operational metrics on what actually drives change. Too much means you do nothing. Just right actually leads to better decisions.
- Build clarity rituals. Have weekly or monthly team meetings where you re-clarify the top priorities. Repetition creates alignment.
- Push one thing down the hill. The more scattered your focus, the less impact you have. Alignment isn’t just about vision, it’s about energy. Make sure your team knows this one focus and that you speak about it incessantly.
Closing Reflection
Early in my career, I was proud of the complex spreadsheets I could build. They were technical, impressive, and entirely dependent on me initially. I then started training teammates on how to manage them and create them themselves. I felt accomplished, like I’d done something good.
But then we’d bring in new team members and they’d face that same uphill climb.As I matured, I realized they lacked resilience. Every extra formula I added made the whole thing more fragile. If one tab broke, the whole system collapsed. No one else could use them without getting lost.
Over time, I stopped building impressive spreadsheets and started building simple processes.
Not because I got lazy. But because I got wiser.
The same applies to your business. What looks like power today may actually be fragility in disguise.
For me, this meant that with Bison CFO, we’ve stepped back and are focusing more on B2B service businesses. Not because we can’t do other things, but because the clarity from focus. Focus will make our team better and mean no one else to compete in this area.
So ask yourself: Where has complexity crept in? Where have you mistaken “more” for “better”? And what might become possible if you started removing things instead of adding them?
Clarity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the soul of forward motion.
