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Complexity is Complex and hard. Simplicity is Simple and easy.

Many people regard the above statements as fact, but can we alter the dialogue?

How can we make Complexity Simple? Such is done around the world every day; a poignant example would be with Airplanes. Engineers employ a precise balance of thrust v. weight, and airfoils to make an airplane fly, yet when you ask many people how planes fly, their response Simply will be “magic.”

The magic lies in their ability to present the Complex Simply. While the engineers have carefully crafted a modern marvel which defies gravity and allows people to travel distances with ease at previously unattainable speeds that is comprised of hundreds of thousands of interconnected, interacting pieces, the end result is, to the average passenger, Simple – You board the plane, you sit there, you arrive at your destination, you disembark.

The lesson to be learned, the secret to making the Complex Simple, is that it is all about delivery and user experience. While you might be the expert and can easily see through the hundreds of columns and rows of data to arrive at a conclusion, the Complex side of the work, it is your job as the expert to distill the data into a form that would allow someone else to draw the same conclusions, Simply.

No chaos. No magic. Just Complexity made Simple, Simply.

Jack Potter is an Associate working to connect the dots at the Food and Drug Administration. He has traveled the world, learning at each step how to make complexity simpler.