The Tesseract of Complexity: How Simplicity Beats Exponential Overload

By: Deryck Hart

One of the most common and frustrating patterns in business occurs when initiatives are being defined—whether for individual goal setting, policy deployment, innovation, strategic planning, or continuous improvement. These efforts often start with the best intentions: clear objectives, well-scoped priorities, and a sense of direction. However, what begins as a focused initiative quickly escalates into an overwhelming labyrinth of complexity. Additional priorities sneak in, interdependencies grow, and soon, execution becomes bogged down by sheer overload—draining resources, delaying impact, and leading to stagnation rather than progress.

Why does this happen? The answer lies in a lethal combination of?the human tendency to overcomplicate and expand initiatives. Let’s examine it.

The Cascade Effect: How Initiatives Multiply

Imagine a team launching a new strategic initiative with two clear and essential focus areas. This seems manageable—after all, two core themes allow for focus, accountability, and execution.

Then, during a meeting, a passionate and vocal team member chimes in: "I love this plan, but hear me out—what if we just added one more initiative? It’s totally aligned with what we’re doing already! How much harder could three be compared to two?" The energy in the room shifts, heads nod, and before long, the proposal is accepted. Just one more, right? After all, what’s the harm in adding a third priority? Three isn’t much harder than two, right?

This is where the human condition sets in. The moment a third initiative is introduced, it sets a precedent—more can be added. If we can handle three, why not a fourth? And while we’re at it, let’s organize each of these into more manageable components. Suddenly, each initiative gains three or more sub-initiatives, all viewed as supporting elements but, in reality, just as complex and demanding as the originals. What started as a focused effort has now ballooned into a web of interconnected initiatives. (And don't get me started on those who think each needs a leading and lagging KPI.) Instead of managing a few priorities well, the team is now juggling an exponentially expanding workload, diluting efforts and overwhelming the organization.

But wait—it gets worse. Strategy and continuous improvement are not two-dimensional checklists; they are multilevel chess games. As initiatives increase, they don’t just add linear complexity; they create cascading decision-making requirements, dependencies, and interactions across teams. Before long, nine initiatives become 27, and the organizational bandwidth is stretched thin.

The Permutation Explosion: Why 3 Isn’t Just 3

It’s not just that 3 initiatives turn into 9 or 27. The real challenge is that every initiative interacts with the others in complex and unpredictable ways. To illustrate this, let’s look at permutation values—the number of ways we can arrange these initiatives when they have dependencies.

• 2 original initiatives: 2! = 2 possible arrangements
• 3 initiatives (one additional priority): 3! = 6 possible arrangements
• 9 initiatives (expansion phase): 9! = 362,880 possible arrangements
• 27 initiatives (uncontrolled expansion phase): 27! = 1.0889 × 10^28 possible arrangements

By going from 2 initiatives to 3, complexity triples. By going from 3 to 9, complexity increases by a factor of 60,480. By the time we reach 27, we’ve entered an entirely different dimension of impossibility—a tesseract of complexity that only a superhero could untangle.

The 80/20 Rule: Simplicity as a Competitive Advantage

When business leaders allow their initiatives to expand unchecked, they set themselves up for failure. Instead of execution and results, they get analysis paralysis and organizational fatigue.

The solution? Adopt the 80/20 mindset. Identify the vital few initiatives that will deliver the majority of impact. Do fewer things, but do them really well. Cut complexity, streamline decision-making, and embrace the principle that less is more.

Simplicity enables speed. Speed enables execution. Execution wins markets.

You can either focus on the vital few and execute flawlessly or be crushed under the weight of an exponential tesseract of complexity. The choice is yours.