Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World - Softcover

One the Washington Post's Twelve Leadership Books to Watch for in 2015

One of Bloomberg Businessweek's Wall Street's Must-Read Books of the Summer

"Whatever you want in life can be achieved if you break it down into a few basic rules. Well, that's the theory of these two business experts, and many influential figures think likewise." -- Times (London)

"Can't convey enough how important this is . . . Simple Rules is the nerd book of the summer." -- Tom Keene, Bloomberg TV

"At last, a book offering an ingenious way to fight back against the relentless assault of complexity and its insidious spawning of untold confusions, costs, crashes, and calamities. Simple Rules offers an exciting framework for both understanding complexity and rendering it harmless. Whether you run an organization or are simply trying to survive modern life, this book is gold." -- Chris Anderson, TED curator

"Simple Rules shows how a handful of thoughtful principles can not only sharpen the quality of your decisions, but also allow you to maintain latitude in your judgments and to see the richness of opportunity. We all deal with complexity now, and this book will show you how you can do more with less." -- Michael J. Mauboussin, head of Global Financial Strategies, Credit Suisse

"Our future will be increasingly complex, from accelerating technological change to global connectivity of federated teams. Simple Rules explains how we can manage to make meaningful progress in a world that exceeds human understanding. At DFJ, we use simple rules, like "invest in unique ideas" to support breakout winners across multiple industries undergoing profound disruption. This is a harbinger of the information economy to come." -- Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson

"Sull and Eisenhardt have written the definitive playbook injecting sanity, creativity, and productivity into our workplaces and the other spheres of our lives. Simple Rules is brimming with clever and surprising tips, lovely stories, and compelling research that will help you spot unnecessary complexity, eliminate maddening frustration, make the right decisions faster, and have a whole lot more fun along way." -- Robert I. Sutton, best-selling author of The No Asshole Rule and coauthor of Scaling Up Excellence

"How simplicity trumps complexity in nature, business, and life. We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn't destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there's a better way: By developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems. Simple rules area hands-on tool to achieve some of our most pressing personal and professional objectives, from overcoming insomnia to becoming a better manager or a smarter investor. Simple rules can help solve some of our most urgent social challenges from setting interest rates at the Federal Reserve to protecting endangered marine wildlife along California's coast. Drawing on more than a decade of rigorous research, the authors provide a clear framework for developing effective rules and making them better over time. They find insights in unexpected places, from the way Tina Fey codified her experience working at Saturday Night Live into rules for producing 30 Rock (rule five: never tell a crazy person he's crazy) to burglars' rules to choose a house to rob ("avoidhouses with a car parked outside") to Japanese engineers using the foraging rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo's rail system. Whether you're struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides a powerful way to tame complexity. "--