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Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Donald Sull (Author), Kathleen M. Eisenhardt (Author), Jeff Cummings (Narrator),
4.1 out of 5 stars 529 ratings

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 are a 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 ("avoid houses 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.

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  1. Listening Length
    7 hours and 54 minutes
  2. Author
    Donald Sull, see all
  3. Narrator
    Jeff Cummings
  4. Audible release date
    April 21, 2015
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Brilliance Audio
  7. ASIN
    B00UNUDMGQ
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length 7 hours and 54 minutes
Author Donald Sull, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Narrator Jeff Cummings
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date April 21, 2015
Publisher Brilliance Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B00UNUDMGQ
Best Sellers Rank #95,629 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#43 in Business Statistics
#199 in Business Decision Making & Problem Solving
#303 in Decision-Making & Problem Solving

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
529 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book enjoyable and entertaining, with lots of useful insights and good value for money. The book is concise and effective at fighting complexity with simplicity, while being brimming with carefully-researched stories. One customer notes it provides real strategic help to both managers and individuals.

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UseReadabilitySimplicityStorytellingEnjoymentValue for money
65 customers mention "Use"62 positive3 negative

Customers find the book provides useful insights and serves as a good guide, with one customer noting it offers strategic help to both managers and individuals.

"...of illustrative examples that defining, improving upon, and abiding by “simple rules” is a foolproof way to solve difficult situations from business..." Read more

"...They should be usable by a specific group of people. There are two other specific things about using simple rules that you should know...." Read more

"...Those rules enable effective, consistent decision-making without extensive investment of time and resources on each individual decision; they are at..." Read more

"...they provide a threshold level of structure while leaving ample scope to exercise discretion.... Close to the facts on the ground, individuals can..." Read more

46 customers mention "Readability"42 positive4 negative

Customers find the book enjoyable and worth their time, with one customer noting its engaging format.

"Among many great books I read this past summer, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull and Kathy Eisenhardt was one of my..." Read more

"...This is a good book that could have been a great book. Here’s the author’s definition of simple rules. “..." Read more

"...Fabulous book, great background research, presented in interesting and thoughtful ways." Read more

"...I really enjoyed reading this book, and I found it very useful in my personal and my professional life...." Read more

45 customers mention "Simplicity"39 positive6 negative

Customers appreciate the book's simplicity, describing it as concise and easy to understand, with clear examples that make it practical to implement.

"...improving upon, and abiding by “simple rules” is a foolproof way to solve difficult situations from business strategies to your personal life...." Read more

"...Simple rules are shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information...." Read more

"...not only organizes a theoretical framework, but is truly practical for managers to apply. I strongly recommend this book to any reader." Read more

"...34;..simple rules work because they provide a threshold level of structure while leaving ample scope to exercise discretion.... Close to the facts..." Read more

15 customers mention "Storytelling"15 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the storytelling in the book, which is brimming with carefully-researched stories, and one customer notes it is backed up by memorable examples.

"...You can read the rest and draw what lessons you will, enjoy the stories that you enjoy, and think of them as a bonus." Read more

"...In brief, this book is full of both perceptive ideas and memorable stories." Read more

"...The book masterfully blends intriguing stories with actionable guidance that readers can quickly put into practice...." Read more

"...What's the secret sauce of Simple Rules? Its focus on narrative, anecdotes, and simplicity. Not surprisingly, Simple rules is dead simple...." Read more

7 customers mention "Enjoyment"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book entertaining.

"...The presentation is both insightful and entertaining, reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers or Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit...." Read more

"Some books are fun to read, others justify serious study. This book does both. The many rich examples are just plain fun...." Read more

"Great and entertaining content that is upset through a lack of footnotes links in the Kindle version...." Read more

"...I've recommended this book to friends and family as a fun and easy read backed up by real research findings." Read more

6 customers mention "Value for money"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book offers good value for money, with one customer noting it lives up to its billing and provides a relevant approach to business.

"...Up to this point, Simple Rules is solid, helpful, and lean. There’s a lot of value...." Read more

"...Rules drastically differs in scope, complexity, and value from any management or strategy book that exists...." Read more

"...All in all, it’s a wonderful book—easily on par with the best popular business books out there. Highly recommended!" Read more

"Simple Rules - An Insightful, Rigorous, and Relevant Approach to Business and Personal Strategy..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Sengy
    5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome read to think deeply about simple rules to implement in your work and personal lives!
    Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Among many great books I read this past summer, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Donald Sull and Kathy Eisenhardt was one of my favorites. True to its name, the book argues through a series of illustrative examples that defining, improving upon, and abiding by “simple rules” is a foolproof way to solve difficult situations from business strategies to your personal life.

    I chose to share this book because I think the importance of simplicity is often forgotten at startups. Furthermore, it’s hard to make strategic decisions with an eye to simplicity, or find simple solutions to complex problems. And with multiple stakeholders in play especially in Series B and C stages, how can you congeal all of these contrarian views into a unified voice?

    That’s where simple rules come in. Eisenhardt and Sull argue that there are 6 main types of simple rules you can create to tackle complex problems. In their words, “simple rules provide a powerful weapon against the complexity that threatens to overwhelm individuals, organizations, and society” (8). Ultimately, the most successful companies focus on identifying critical processes, like product development or customer outreach, and establish clear rules to live by for those processes to ultimately skyrocket to success. A business’ strategy should be established as a set of simple rules to guide important organizational decisions (143).

    The six types of simple rules are:

    1. Boundary rules – deciding between two mutually exclusive alternatives
    2. Prioritizing rules – ranking options
    3. Stopping rules -- when to reverse a decision
    4. How-to rules – task execution
    5. Coordination rules – getting multiple actors to work together
    6. Timing rules – getting things done in an appropriate time/rhythm

    A great way to wrap your head around the idea of a business successfully implementing simple rules as the book details is Zipcar – the world’s largest car-sharing network relies on a handful of simple rules to coordinate its extensive and complicated operations. The company has 6 simple rules to 1) report damage, 2) keep it clean, 3) no smoking, 4) fill ‘er up, 5) return on time, and 6) pets in carriers. As we can all experience firsthand, Zipcar works really well and has grown so successfully in large part due to its attention to simplicity. Beyond the working world, you can also apply simple rules to improve processes in your life. For example, you might make a rule to not check emails before 10 am, not eat junk food late at night or take time every day to meditate. The simpler the rule, the easier it is to not only remember but put into practice. Furthermore the simple rule should “move the needle” on something that really matters to you – e.g. the meditation simple rule might be more relevant for a busy person struggling to find balance but not for an active yogi.

    Of course, simple rules do not make data and data-driven decisions invalid. As I stated in a past post, large data troves can be critically important to identifying and prioritizing strategic decisions. However, “simple rules focus on only the most critical variables” ignoring the “tenuous correlations” or noise that complicated models often incorporate (34). This is backed up by evidence – I was surprised to learn that psychologists have found that people outweigh peripheral variables at the expense of critical ones when they take multiple factors into account.

    Based on my personal reflections of my experience this past summer, I would encourage all of you to A) read this book or B) at least challenge yourself to think about the simple rules you can establish in your personal life and ultimately in a business to improve critical processes to magnify your success.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars A helpful message for organizations and people
    Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    Rules are so complicated throughout the world that innovation, creativity, and adherence become greatly challenged. As a society, we need to utilize simple rules to get the best out of people, organizatjons, and governments.
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  • Wally Bock
    3.0 out of 5 stars A good book that could have been a great book
    Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I’ve been a fan of simple rules for years. Sometimes we called them “simple rules” and sometimes we called them “guidelines.” Sometimes they were “rules of thumb” and at other times they were “heuristics.” But I know how powerful and useful they can be. And, several years ago, I read Kathleen Eisenhardt’s book Competing on The Edge, which I thought was remarkably insightful and helpful.

    Put those two things together and you can guess that I was excited about reading Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World by Kathleen Eisenhardt and Donald Sull. I found a lot to like, but I was also disappointed. This is a good book that could have been a great book.

    Here’s the author’s definition of simple rules.

    “Simple rules are shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information. The rules aren’t universal – they’re tailored to the particular situation and the person using them.”

    That’s a good definition, and the first part of the book covers the basics of simple rules. After the introduction, there’s a chapter on why simple rules work and when you use them.

    You want to use simple rules for repetitive judgement calls. They should be tailored to a specific activity, especially when you must make a decision on the fly. They should be usable by a specific group of people. There are two other specific things about using simple rules that you should know.

    Simple rules are guidelines, not recipes. They don’t tell you what to do. Instead, they tell you how to decide what to do quickly. Simple rules are also the most powerful when they’re applied to important things. You can certainly use them for less important things, but importance and power go hand in hand.

    We live in a world where things seem to become more complex by the day. The temptation is to meet complexity with complexity. That’s what legislators try to do when they crank out laws that run to thousands of pages to try to deal with a complex marketplace or a complex regulatory challenge. Those thousand-page laws generate thousands of regulations. Even with all that effort and applied brainpower, I can’t think of a single situation where it’s worked.

    Simple rules give us a way to fight complexity with simplicity. That’s one of the big takeaways from this book.

    The chapter on Making Better Decisions introduces us to three kinds of rules. There are boundary rules that tell us where to do things and where not to do them. Prioritizing rules help us decide what to do first. And stopping rules help us know or decide when it’s time to quit and move on.

    Up to this point, Simple Rules is solid, helpful, and lean. There’s a lot of value. That changes when we move into the chapter on Doing Things Better. There, we’re introduced to two more kinds of rules: coordination rules and timing rules. I’m sure they can be helpful, but I never got the point. I could have skipped this chapter.

    The chapter on Where Simple Rules Come From is interesting, but not necessary. You can pick up some common-sense tips, like the fact that people are more likely to follow rules they help develop, but you might be able to skip this chapter entirely, too.

    I expected the chapter on strategy and simple rules to be really helpful. Several writers, such as Erika Andersen, have approached strategy with just this idea in mind. If the people on the front line don’t have simple rules to follow, they’re not likely to do what you want, especially under pressure. Alas, this is where the book starts to wander off into the weeds. We’re told “When it comes to deciding where to apply simple rules, the most obvious activity is not always the right answer.” That’s certainly true, but it would have been better if the authors had given us clear and full advice on how to decide what is the right answer.

    The authors talk a lot about bottlenecks. But their definitions aren’t very helpful and their examples sometimes make things worse. Not only that, in my experience at least, bottlenecks are only one of three things you want to look at if you want to make an organization more effective.

    I think of a bottleneck as a place where a process slows down. When you fix the bottlenecks in a process, and you speed the process up. The authors cover bottlenecks, but they ignore two other important things where simple rules can help.

    Leverage points are activities that have an outrageously large effect compared to the amount of input. They’re the 20 percent of the things you do that give you 80 percent of the results. Making performance on these things more efficient will have an outsized impact on organizational performance.

    Every industry or company has Key Success Factors, the things you must do if you want the organization to succeed. Simple rules can help you perform better on your Key Success Factors.

    There are also interesting and helpful things in the book that don’t move the book forward. Two examples are the interesting stories about Roald Amundsen and about Money Ball. There are lessons here, but I’m not sure how they relate to Simple Rules.

    Bottom Line

    You’ll get good value from this book if all you read is the first few chapters. You can read the rest and draw what lessons you will, enjoy the stories that you enjoy, and think of them as a bonus.
    67 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Alberto
    2.0 out of 5 stars Prescindible
    Reviewed in Spain on August 17, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Esperaba bastante más. Me costara acabarlo.muy repetitivo. Recomiendo Seeking Wisdon de Peter Bevelin o Poor Charlie's almanack. Decepcionado por el contenido.
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  • Koenraad
    4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on May 31, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Could have done with a few chapters less. Otherwise a great addition to traditional strategy books. What I missed in the strategy part is the acknowledgement of current success and distilling simple rules of effective practices thus far.
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  • Mauricio Babilonia
    5.0 out of 5 stars Well written and insightful
    Reviewed in France on November 10, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Excellent illustration of the hard work required to reach the simplicity that is necessary to consistently tackle and thrive over complexity in the long term.
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  • RAE
    5.0 out of 5 stars This is one of the best books I've read
    Reviewed in Canada on December 18, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This is one of the best books I've read, period.

    Whether you picked up this book for business or self-help is irrelevant.The concepts explained in this book are applicable to every aspect of your life. I can only speak for myself, so here's what I gleaned from the book: When to use simple rules and when to use something more detailed? Simple rules are great when flexibility is important whereas detailed rules are great when consistency is important.

    The book goes on to detail different types of simple rules that are benefical under different circumstances, and how to go about crafting them for your individual needs and improving them over time.
    The book also plays the devil's advocate to make a case for when to let go of your simple rules all together for a brand new set of simple rules or detailed ones.

    At the end of the day, the question I ask myself AFTER reading every (non-foction) book is: what did I learn from this and how can I apply this EASILY? The book is short and succinct, so distilling what you learnt from it and how you can apply it is easy. So for me it gets a very hgih mark there.

    The question you should be asking BEFORE reading this is: do I want more simplcity in my life, but didn't know how to get there? For me the answer was yes. The book certainly promises that, and I could sense the clarity with the few pages I read in the book preview. If this sounds like you then you should probably buy this book, and go through it with a highlighter. Re-read it again after the fact.
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  • Rene
    5.0 out of 5 stars Reglas para ser práctico
    Reviewed in Mexico on March 27, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Buen libro para ser práctico en la complejidad, y lleno de ejemplos de todo tipo, tanto del mundo empresarial como de una gran variedad de áreas de estudio y vida común.
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