SUPER SIMPLE SIX

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News and Views about a Complex World

On Covid and the new 'Social Six' strategy

" Life is simple but insist on making it complicated" - Confucius

Is 6 the magic political number to stave off Covid this Autumn?

The UK Government seems to think so, having just introduced its strategy to limit social gatherings (preserving workplace and schools which in theory have managed social distance) to this number.

The number 6 is mathematically 'Perfect' - this we know, thanks to Euclid of Alexandria, the father of geometry

Why is the number 6 so special? Well,.as I have said in these different articles, from a short piece in GQ Magazine to a long essay in Strategy + Business Magazine and this recent note in Medium - 6 is culturally, geometrically and scientifically special: The number is surprisingly prevalent in the natural world and human society alike: From sport to funerals (we bury our dead 6 feet under), from the legs of insects to the six-sided hexagon - the most space-efficient shape in nature and the shape of the honeybee's hive - 6 is a clean, clear, practical number.

The government has, I suspect, chosen 6 in order to have a stab at clarity in an otherwise very complex and opaque situation: We do not know if the disease is actually less strong, we hope so; until every person can get tested in minutes at any hour of the day or night we are guessing. Guessing is not clarity. We need something solid.

Six is a stab at solidity.

So a limit on the least stable interaction - the purely social - makes sense. And the symmetry and smallness of six is also smart.

CLICK HERE for the Simplicity Principle podcast series

Elegant Simplicity

Simplicity as a strategy (and mine happens to place using the number 6 at its core) is also gaining traction: Tim Davie, the BBC Director General, mentioned the concept several times in his introductory speech earlier this month, and yesterday the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, used two words to sum up his strategy: "Super Simple".

Ah, those of you who dislike authority figures may see this as a reason *not* to embrace simplicity, let alone the number 6, but I would say that this time is forcing institutions who have generated and relied on complexity to slim down and simplify what they do and how they do it - or at least try to - as a matter of life and death.

I leave you with the words of the great peace campaigner and activist Satish Kumar, who I had the deep pleasure of interviewing this week and for whom simplicity is elegant.

As Satish says: "Simplicity and complexity are complementary. Existence is complex, but simple". This balance is what we need, and this crisis is bringing our focus to it. This, we should welcome.

Keep it Simple. Stick to Six.