As simple as possible, and no simpler

Albert Einstein is attributed where I see this aphorism cited, and its value never seems to diminish.  From my early days (in this industry, at least) as a systems-level programmer, the expression has proven its durability as one of my core, guiding principles.  The principle is a touchstone — apply it to a piece of work, in my case almost always a piece of writing — and it helps you determine, as touchstones did centuries ago with silver and gold, the purity of your work.

Disclosure: I am a customer of Pragmatic Marketing(r), and have put dozens of marketing and product management professionals through their eminently sensible workshops and seminars.  Most recently, we beta-tested David Meerman Scott’s new class on "The New Rules of Marketing and PR."  So douse my credibility since my company is clearly a believer in their product.

But the reality is that Phil Myers, their CEO, is some kind of marketing services Einstein.  Read their site materials, talk to attendees at their sessions, read they print pub, The Pragmatic Marketer.  The elegance of their framework, the clarity with which they evangelize it, and the consistency in their repetition of their basic themes and axioms is, as I am fond of saying, "a thing of beauty and a joy forever."

Why?  Because whether or not you organize and execute to the letter of Pragmatic’s teachings, they have established a framework and a vocabulary that enables organizations I have led to:

• communicate internally as well as externally
• make decisions
• execute
• measure performance

in ways that are free of the kind of imprecision and clutter which typified many technology executives’ thinking and decision-making during the early days of the software industry, and even the heyday of the internet boom and burst.

This allows us to focus on the real, market-based issues facing our business, and get out of the "blamestorming" business.  Thanks for that.