To make your own simple rules, here are 3 questions to ask yourself:
What’s the objective? What am I/are we really trying to achieve here?
Where’s the bottleneck? What’s preventing me/us from achieving the objective?
What rules/guidelines have worked/not worked in the past (mine your own data here)?
If you think the status quo is OK, here are 3 reasons why simplifying things pays off:
You can make faster decisions because you only need to consider a few key factors.
Complicated formulas and too much data cause you to overfit the past. Therefore, simple formulas and less data = better predictor of the future.
People actually do it (easier to keep in mind 3, rather than 10 things).
Conclusion
Beyond personal and organizational effectiveness, the answer to “the value of simple rules?” is simple –
We have enough complexity in our lives already. Don’t go looking to increase it.