A board chair once said to me, “We’re doing well… but I can’t explain our business as simply as I used to.”
The CEO felt it too. Meetings were longer. Decisions took more cycles. Teams were busy, but the momentum felt slower. Nothing was “wrong,” yet everything felt heavier.
That is how complexity enters an organization. Quietly. Gradually. Disguised as progress.
Complexity is not created by growth alone. It is created when growth is not designed.
I worked with a company that had expanded into new markets, added new product lines, and implemented new systems within eighteen months. Each move made sense on its own. Together, they created friction. Leaders spent more time coordinating than deciding. Accountability blurred. Execution slowed.
The business hadn’t become weak. It had become complicated.
And complicated businesses do not scale well. They consume leadership energy instead of converting it into enterprise value.
Complexity kills value in three ways:
- It slows decision velocity – clarity gets buried under coordination.
- It fractures accountability – ownership becomes shared, which means owned by no one.
- It exhausts leadership capacity – energy is spent managing the system, not growing the enterprise.
None of this shows up immediately in financials.
That is why complexity is so dangerous. It erodes value before it erodes performance.
When we stepped back with this leadership team, we didn’t add another initiative. We removed several. We simplified the operating rhythm. We clarified who owned which decisions. The business didn’t get smaller. It got stronger.
Enterprise value increases when the organization becomes easier to understand, easier to run, and easier to trust.
This is what Enterprise Value Architects do.
They don’t add structure. They remove friction.
Key Takeaways for CEOs
- If your business feels heavier as it grows, complexity is already costing you.
- Your job is not to manage complexity. It is to design it out.
- Simplicity is not the absence of sophistication. It is the result of disciplined leadership.
- Enterprise value rises when decision-making becomes faster, not when processes multiply.
- What you remove may matter more than what you add.
Key Takeaways for Boards
- Complexity rarely appears on dashboards, but it always shows up in execution.
- If explanations of the business keep getting longer, risk is increasing.
- Strong boards protect simplicity as a strategic asset.
- Ask what should stop, not only what should start.
- Boards create value when they help leadership reduce friction, not increase it.
Growth adds opportunity. Complexity adds drag.
Enterprise value is created when leaders ensure the organization becomes clearer as it becomes larger.