Simplicity Is a Commercial Strategy. Most Large Businesses Have Forgotten That.

The most complex organisations I have worked in were not complex because the work demanded it. They were complex because complexity had accumulated, layer by layer, restructure by restructure, acquisition by acquisition, until nobody could quite remember why things were organised the way they were, nobody felt confident enough to change them or had a vision of what ‘simpler’ could actually look like in reality.

I don’t think that’s a niche observation. It is one of the most consistent patterns in large businesses today, and the commercial cost of it is considerably larger than most boards have honestly reckoned with and we’re now starting to see bear out in client pitches & ultimately stock prices.

Simplicity is not the opposite of sophistication

There is a version of this conversation that business leaders tend to dismiss fairly quickly. Simplicity sounds like a suggestion to make things smaller, less capable, less able to serve the breadth of what a complex client or market requires. That is not correct.

Simplicity is about clarity of structure, accountability and decision-making, not about reducing ambition or capability. The most sophisticated organisations I have seen operate with remarkable clarity about who does what, who decides what, and what the client experiences as a result. That clarity is not accidental and it is not easy to build. In large, matrixed, multi-brand businesses it requires genuine courage from leadership, because simplifying almost always means someone losing something, a title, a budget, a seat at a table they have occupied for years.

Which is partly why it so rarely happens.

Where complexity does its real damage

Complexity damages large businesses in two places simultaneously, and the two are more connected than they are usually treated.

The first is decision-making speed and quality. In genuinely complex organisations, decisions that should take days take weeks, and decisions that should take weeks take quarters. The structure requires so many stakeholders to be consulted, so many sign-offs to be gathered, and so many competing priorities to be navigated that momentum dies in the process. But the speed problem is compounded by something less often discussed: quality. The number of layers a decision has to travel means that those with genuine expertise in the matter at hand are frequently not consulted at all, or are consulted too late. Information degrades as it moves up and down the organisation, filtered and shaped by the layers it passes through, until what reaches the executive team is a version of reality that middle managers have consciously or unconsciously edited for consumption. The result is senior decisions that feel well-informed but are often disconnected from what is actually happening on the ground, with the people closest to the client or the problem having neither the authority to act nor a reliable route to influence those who do.

The second is culture and ownership. Complexity, over time, quietly erodes accountability. When responsibilities are shared across multiple teams, geographies and functions, it becomes genuinely difficult to identify who owns an outcome, as distinct from who is involved in delivering it. That distinction matters more than most acknowledge. Involvement without ownership creates the conditions for good people to disengage, for politics to fill the vacuum that clarity would otherwise occupy, and for the organisation to default to activity rather than results.

Why complexity persists

Not all organisational complexity is accidental. Some of it is built, consciously or not, as a form of protection.

In large businesses, complexity can function as a cover for capability gaps. A leader who is genuinely uncertain about their own authority, or whose team is not performing to the standard the role requires, has a structural incentive to keep things opaque. Unclear processes make it harder to hold anyone accountable. Overlapping responsibilities make it easier to deflect. Multiple layers of sign-off distribute the risk of a poor decision across enough people that no single person has to own it. The result is an organisation that feels busy and thorough and well-governed, while actually moving slowly and delivering inconsistently.

It is one of the most important questions a senior leader can ask about their own structure: is this complexity genuinely serving the work, or is it serving the people who benefit from keeping things unclear or complicated?

What PE-backed and independent businesses do differently

The contrast with PE-backed and independent businesses is interesting, and is a dynamic I have seen play out repeatedly in recent consulting work.

Businesses operating under private equity ownership tend to operate with a clarity of structure and accountability that most large corporates would find startling. A significant part of the reason is that leaders in PE-backed environments typically have much greater visibility on what drives enterprise value for their shareholders, and on the specific levers they have available to optimise it. That visibility creates focus. When you know precisely what moves the dial commercially, and your investors are holding you to it on a defined timeline, the tolerance for structural complexity that does not directly serve the outcome tends to shrink very quickly. Decisions get made by the people closest to the problem. Accountability is named rather than distributed. The organisation is structured around what needs to happen rather than what has always existed.

That said, this is not a universal picture. Some recent conversations with CEOs of PE-backed businesses reveal exactly the same challenges, the same complexity, the same diffuse accountability, the same distance between decision-makers and reality. The difference is that those conversations tend to arise because investors are demanding the business does something about it. The pressure is external and it is real, and it produces a sense of urgency that large listed businesses, accountable to a broader and more diffuse set of stakeholders, often struggle to generate from within.

Independent businesses operate with a similar instinct, frequently born of necessity. When resources are constrained and margin is visible, you cannot afford to maintain structures that do not earn their keep. The result is often a leaner, faster, more coherent operating model, and frequently a better client experience, than organisations with significantly greater resources manage to deliver.

The HoldCo challenge: beyond the quarterly cycle

There is a specific version of this challenge that applies to holding company structures, and it deserves naming directly. Large HoldCos face a particular gravitational pull toward short-termism, where the pressure of quarterly results, analyst expectations and shareholder reporting creates a rhythm that works against the kind of sustained, multi-year focus that genuine simplification requires.

Structural change, cultural change and operating model redesign do not deliver in a quarter. They deliver over years, and the temptation to lurch from result to result, adjusting course each time the numbers disappoint, is one of the most consistent obstacles to building something that actually lasts. The businesses that manage this well tend to have leadership teams and boards that have made an explicit and shared commitment to the things that drive long-term enterprise value, and that maintain focus on those things even when the short-term pressure is pulling in a different direction. That requires a level of discipline and alignment at the top that is rarer than it should be.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean you can’t work at pace and feel impact quickly in targeted and focused areas, but turning the tanker can take time.

What simplicity actually requires from leadership

Choosing simplicity in a large organisation is a political act as much as an operational one. It requires leaders who are secure enough in their own capability that they do not need complexity to protect them. It requires the willingness to have conversations that restructuring always produces, about roles, about relevance, about who the organisation actually needs at this point in its development. And it requires a board and executive team with the patience to accept short-term disruption in exchange for a structure that can genuinely move at the speed the market now demands.

The businesses getting this right are not doing it because it is easy. They are doing it because the alternative is an organisation that is increasingly difficult for clients to buy from, increasingly difficult for talent to thrive in, and increasingly difficult for leadership to steer with any confidence.

Simplicity, done well, is a growth strategy.

What Actually Works: How Intelio Works Can Help

Operating model simplification in large, complex organisations is one of the areas where I have spent a significant part of my career, leading it, advising on it, and picking up the pieces when it has been done badly. The work Intelio Works does in this space covers:

• Operating model design and simplification: working with leadership teams to map what exists, understand what is genuinely serving the business and what is not, and design a structure with clarity of role, accountability and decision-making at its centre

• Transformation leadership: providing interim or advisory support through the delivery of operating model change, where the gap between a clean design and a messy reality requires experienced hands to navigate

• Leadership and culture: addressing the human side of simplification, including the capability conversations, the political dynamics, and the cultural conditions that determine whether a new structure actually takes hold or quietly reverts

• AI and operating model integration: ensuring that AI investment is designed into a clear, accountable operating model rather than bolted onto a complex one, where it will amplify the existing dysfunction rather than resolve it

If your organisation is carrying more complexity than it needs, the starting point is usually an honest conversation about what it is actually costing you, commercially, culturally, and in terms of the pace at which you can respond to what the market is asking of you.