One of the reasons there is so much complexity built into modern organizations is a deep aversion to risk.

The fear of failure, or, more specifically, the fear being blamed for a failure, causes managers to build layers and layers of checks and balances into systems and processes.

These checks and balances act like clots in the arteries of the organization, often slowing the flow of information and materials to almost nothing.

The underlying assumption in this all-to-common situation is that the only way to succeed is to remove the chance of anything going wrong.

Paul Ormerod aims to challenge that assumption in his book Why Most Things Fail. Interviewed in the most recent Harvard Business Review, Ormerod essentially argues that embracing failure is at least as likely to help an organization succeed as shying away from it – probably more so.

“The companies that are most able to explore and innovate — something akin to random mutation — and then rapidly and flexibly adapt when an innovation succeeds or fails, will do best,” he says.

Bottom line: all those complex checks and balances might help your organization feel secure, but chances are they won’t really help in the long term. So you might as well enjoy the benefits of simplicity instead.