Hello Reader,

Your competitor launched three features last quarter. You're still debating org structure. They pivoted twice in six months. Your product roadmap has seventeen stakeholder sign-offs.

You diagnose: "Our organization is too complex. We need to streamline. Simplify. Flatten the hierarchy."

Wrong problem.

Your organization isn't complex. The market is. And you're blaming the ant when you should be reading the beach.

This is Simon's Law of Complexity—and it reveals why most organizational "simplification" efforts fail.

This mental model is part of Re:Mind, our toolkit for clearer thinking in a world where consultants profit from misattributing complexity.

Why Use It

Business complexity lives in the wrong place.

When a company's behavior appears chaotic, with shifts in strategy, conflicting priorities, and departments working at cross-purposes, we diagnose organizational dysfunction. "Too many layers." "Siloed teams." "Poor communication." We hire consultants. Restructure. Install new processes.

The complexity persists.

Simon's Law explains why: An ant on a beach traces a wildly complex path—zigzagging around pebbles, circling shells, detouring past driftwood. Graph that route, and it looks sophisticated, even intelligent. But the ant follows simple rules. The complexity lives in the terrain, not the traveler.

Herbert Simon's 1962 insight: "An ant, viewed as a behaving system, is quite simple. The apparent complexity of its behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which it finds itself."

Apply this to business.

Your organization has simple decision rules: maximize revenue, minimize risk, serve existing customers, and meet quarterly targets. Simple. However, the terrain, encompassing competitive moves, regulatory changes, technological shifts, customer demands, talent wars, and supply chain disruptions, is staggeringly complex.

Your "dysfunctional" organization isn't complex. It's simple rules navigating complex terrain. The zigzag pattern you're seeing? That's not organizational chaos. That's a rational response to market complexity.

This matters for mental sovereignty. Management consultants sell organizational complexity as the problem (then sell you expensive solutions). Strategy frameworks promise to "simplify" your business. They're misdiagnosing. You don't have an ant problem. You have a beach problem.

When you can't distinguish your organization's simple rules from market terrain, you waste resources fixing the wrong thing.

When to Use It

Consultants keep diagnosing "complexity" then selling simplification. If their business model depends on you believing your organization is too complex, they've got incentive to misattribute. Your "organizational complexity" is their revenue model. Deploy this model when:

• Organizational changes don't change behavior. You restructured. Simplified reporting lines. Installed new processes. The chaotic patterns persist. That's your signal to stop examining org charts. Examine market terrain.
• Different companies in your industry exhibit similar "dysfunction." If every competitor is constantly pivoting, maybe it's not an organizational failure. Perhaps the market terrain is forcing constant course corrections. The complexity is environmental.
• Your strategy keeps changing, and you can't explain why. You planned to focus on the enterprise. Now you're chasing SMB. You were building features. Now you're cutting costs. It feels reactive, even irrational. But trace it back: you're responding to market signals with simple rules. The market terrain is shifting.

How to Use It

Before reorganizing or hiring consultants, run this three-step diagnostic. It separates ant problems from beach problems, so you fix the right system.

Ask: Where's the complexity?

When business behavior feels chaotic, stop pathologizing your organization. Instead:

• Chart competitive moves forcing responses
• Map regulatory constraints limiting options
• Identify customer demand patterns, creating pressure
• Document technology disruptions requiring adaptation
• Track talent market dynamics shaping decisions

You're scanning for environmental features (the market terrain forcing organizational zigzags).

Name your organization's simple rules

You're not running a sophisticated strategy. You're executing basic decision rules:

• "Hit revenue targets"
• "Retain top customers"
• "Keep key talent"
• "Maintain margin"
• "Beat primary competitor"

These rules are embarrassingly simple. That's not the problem. The problem is reconciling them across a complex, often contradictory market terrain.

Redesign the terrain, not the organization.

Mental sovereignty in business means controlling the environment, not optimizing the system:

• Reduce terrain complexity: Exit markets, narrow focus, choose simpler competitive environments
• Change the terrain: Modify incentives, alter what counts as success, shift constraints
• Build different terrain: Enter markets where your simple rules produce the behavior you want

The organizational "dysfunction" evaporates. Not because you changed the org. Because you changed the beach.

Next Steps

This week: Pick one organizational behavior you've been calling "too complex."

The pattern that leads to a leadership blaming culture, structure, or communication. The thing consultants keep promising to fix.

Stop reorganizing. Map the terrain.

List every environmental force creating that behavior: competitive pressure, regulatory constraint, customer demand, talent market reality, and technology shift. Chart what your organization is actually responding to.

Then ask: If we remove or reshape those terrain features, does the behavior change? If yes, it was never an organizational problem.

You've been doing ant surgery. Start doing beach design.

Where It Came From

Herbert A. Simon introduced this principle in "The Architecture of Complexity" (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1962). Simon, an economist, cognitive psychologist, and Nobel Prize winner, was studying organizational behavior and decision-making in complex systems.

His ant metaphor became foundational in management science, organizational theory, and systems thinking. The insight: we see intricate organizational behavior and assume organizational complexity. However, complexity often resides in the environment, not within the organization navigating it.

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Until next time, keep questioning. Your mind is the last territory you truly control.

Think Independently, JC

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