The words “simple” and “easy” are not synonyms. A task or process can be simple but not easy, and it might be easy but not simple. 

Let me provide a couple of quick examples to illustrate what I mean:

Driving a manual-transmission car is one of the most complex that a human being can do. It requires you to do multiple things with your hands (steering, changing gears) while engaging each of your feet in a separate task (one on the gas and one alternating between brake and clutch); furthermore, you’re required to make constant decisions about how to manage each of those tasks while maintaining a sharp focus on road conditions and making constant decisions about lane strategy and routing – some of them in a split second. Very few daily tasks require anything like this constellation of simultaneous duties and decision-making. And yet for most people who drive, the process is quite easy; for experienced drivers, a lifetime of practice and skill acquisition make driving a car, even one with a manual transmission, something that can be done without too much conscious thought – and can be accomplished safely and effectively while listening to music, carrying on conversation, thinking about work, etc. For most people, driving a car is not simple, but it’s easy.

Walking on a smooth, paved surface, on the other hand, is one of the simplest things a human being can do. It involves no skill beyond what most humans have typically acquired by the age of two. However, I once had an experience that really

conveyed to me the difference between simple and easy. My family and I were walking the trail up Mount Timpanogos to Timpanogos Cave. To call it a “trail” is almost laughable; it’s a paved walkway about one and a half miles long. Walking it is a very simple matter. However, the trail is very steep: over the course of that mile and a half you rise in elevation almost 1100 feet, and very soon you find yourself stopping to rest about every 20 yards. Walking this trail is simple, but it’s not easy.

Why am I making this point in Vision & Balance? Because over the years, I’ve noticed that in casual conversation, people often conflate these two words as if they were synonyms. And in casual conversation, it’s not usually a high-stakes problem – not one that really needs to be noted or corrected. In fact, noting or correcting it would probably make you sound like a pedant and a jerk. In an organizational context, however, the conflation can have more significant impacts.

For example, one institutional dynamic that is important to understand is that the further you are from a system, the simpler it looks. (I’ll be discussing this further in a future article.) Ask yourself how many times you’ve heard someone in your library say to someone else “Look, it’s simple: your department just needs to _________.” In this case, the speaker is usually arguing that the other person’s department needs to do something that he believes to be both simple and easy – but it may only one of those (or neither). The first person’s distance from the department in question is likely leading him to underestimate the actual work that would be required to make the requested change.

In other cases, a proposed course of action may be genuinely simple, and may be incorrectly perceived as therefore easy. You may have someone in your library who speaks up too often and at too-great length in meetings, making it harder for others to participate; you may have someone else who tends to erupt in anger in unprofessional ways and at inappropriate times. The bloviator needs to control his impulse to constantly speak up; the eruptor needs to control her tendency to lash out. Both of those are simple expectations; both may also be incredibly difficult for the people in question.

There are many complex tasks in librarianship that those who have been doing them for a long time, or who are particularly talented, might make look easy. Employees – including leaders – who allow themselves to be fooled by the ease with which their colleagues are accomplishing those tasks may be led to underestimate the tasks’ complexity, which can lead to strategic errors. (“Phyllis has no problem producing 25 original serial records every week. We should expect the same thing of our other two serials catalogers.”)

One of the important skills of a leader is the ability (and willingness) to see below the surface to realities that are not immediately apparent. Keeping alert to the distinction between “simple” and “easy” is one habit of mind that will help you do that.

Takeaways and Action Items

• Not everything that looks simple is actually simple; not everything that actually is simple is easy. Keeping this in mind will help you be effective and strategic in leadership.
• Ask one of your direct reports to tell you what he or she thinks is the simplest of your duties. Don’t correct that person if s/he is wrong – but consider why it is that s/he that the duty in question looks simple from that perspective.