I was sitting in a meeting today – generally a practical alternative to work – and my colleague in my team said something rather striking. “There are two types of people in the world – complexifiers and simplifiers.” This struck a chord with me and made me think for a bit. It seems you can group the world into two arch types.
The complexifiers are those that take something simple and layer it. Bury it. Those people who complicate the simplest task. A simple email becomes a short story; a short story becomes a feasibility study.
The simplifiers look to take the path shortest to the goal without compromise. They see a path to the end goal that can be explained in simple terms that deliver the impact required.
After googling the term complexifiers I found the source of my colleagues comments. Scott Berkun. There are some great pieces of work on Scotts website that are worth reading. Now as Scott says, do you really want to work with complexifiers?