Over a few decades in advertising, I’ve been involved with some companies that thrive on simplicity. I’ve also worked with some that lose sight of great ideas (and drive away great people) in a vortex of complexity. Surely there’s a book in there somewhere. Or two.

Happy simplification!

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success

The world has never seen a success story quite like Apple’s. Facing bankruptcy in 1997, Apple became the world’s most valuable company just 14 years later. It’s a story of great vision, design, engineering and marketing.

But Apple had one important advantage that tied all of these things together—Steve Jobs’s love of simplicity. You can see it in the way the company organizes, innovates, markets and communicates. As Steve himself once put it, simplicity “can move mountains.”

Insanely Simple is based on my 12 years’ experience working with Steve Jobs as his ad agency creative director, spanning NeXT and Apple. Focusing on ten core principles, it explains how Steve used simplicity as a competitive weapon, besting companies who had far bigger resources to draw upon.

I bring it all to life through a series of amusing/fascinating/sometimes-scary stories about working in the never-dull world of Steve Jobs.

Apple is unique in many ways, but the principles that drove Steve can be embraced by any person, in any organization—and used to build fantastic success.

Free chapter. Buy at Penguin Random House.

Think Simple: How Great Leaders Defeat Complexity

My first book, Insanely Simple, focuses on Steve Jobs and Apple—and how Steve’s love of simplicity changed the way Apple innovated, marketed, sold at retail and even organized itself.

As a speaker, I am often asked, “Do you have any real-world suggestions for making an organization simpler?”

Think Simple is my way of answering that question. It’s the result of my interviews with over 40 business leaders in different industries around the world. In this book, these leaders explain why they place such high value on simplicity, and how they instill it into their companies. You’ll hear valuable ideas for simplification from the leaders and founders of Whole Foods, The Container Store, Ben & Jerry’s and many more.

Free chapter. Buy at Amazon.