It’s often assumed that if you can easily understand something, you’re not getting the whole story. But that’s rarely the case. The best ideas are often the most simple. Learning to value simplicity can change how you look at your business and the world.

William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, observes, “Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.”

You can learn to value simplicity and apply it to your everyday business practice. Take the company Life is Good, for example.  Founded by two brothers in 1994, Life is Good is a lifestyle brand that mainly sells T-shirts. In 2008, Life is Good sold 4.2 million T-shirts retailing at $25 a pop. Not bad.

Sure, your business might be a little more complex than Life is Good, but does your company philosophy need to be? Their philosophy is “simple, timeless messages of optimism, a celebration of life’s simple pleasures, and a bedrock belief in leaving the world a better place than we found it.”

Life is Good’s philosophy isn’t clever; it’s not radically new. Heck, it’s not new at all. But it is profoundly simple—and positive—and obviously, it works.

Related posts:

1. Communicating Ideas Effectively With Words
2. The Discipline of Business