Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

“The nerd book of the summer.”—Tom Keene, Bloomberg TV

“Whether you run an organization or are simply trying to survive modern life, this book is gold.”—Chris Anderson, curator of TED Talks

Armed with a few simple rules, you can tackle even the most complex of problems.

Drawing on more than a decade of rigorous research, Sull and Eisenhardt 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 Japanese engineers using the foraging rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo’s rail system. This is the definitive playbook for living simply and efficiently in every sphere of life.

“Simple Rules . . . will help you spot unnecessary complexity, eliminate maddening frustration, make the right decisions faster, and have a whole lot more fun along way.”—Robert I. Sutton, best-selling author of The No Asshole Rule and coauthor of Scaling Up Excellence

“We all deal with complexity now, and this book will show you how you can do more with less.”—Michael J. Mauboussin, head of global financial strategies, Credit Suisse

“Simple Rules explains how we can manage to make meaningful progress in a world that exceeds human understanding . . . This is a harbinger of the information economy to come.” —Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson

A WASHINGTON POST LEADERSHIP BOOK TO WATCH FOR 2015 • A BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK MUST-READ BOOK OF THE SUMMER