The best leaders share one habit that sets them apart: they refuse to let complexity accumulate. McKinsey researchers studying the traits of high-performing CEOs surfaced that counterintuitive finding, and two of the most closely watched executives in business have built a working philosophy around it.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explained his taste for flat structures in terms of information, not efficiency. “I love that there is no privileged access to information,” he said, describing an organization where everyone works from the same base and hears the reasoning behind both the problem and the solution. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon put it as a standing order: eliminate bureaucracy continuously and without hesitation.
Nicholas Mukhtar reaches the same conclusion from a different doorway. The Fort Lauderdale management consultant, who founded Tera Strategies, works with family offices and wealth management practices on removing approval layers that slow an organization’s response without adding meaningful oversight. Each extra sign-off feels like prudence. In aggregate, those layers become the reason a firm cannot move when it needs to.
He has made simplification central to how he treats burnout as well. Pressed on what leaders should actually do, Mukhtar does not reach first for wellness programs. “You just need to simplify things and have a conversation about why this isn’t working,” he said. “What are the things that are bothering you and how do we make it better?” The executive who is burning out, in his telling, is often the same one who let complexity in workflow, team structure, and expectations pile up unchecked for years.
The hidden cost of that clutter is enormous. McKinsey research has found that employees spend more than 60% of their working time navigating fragmented systems and unclear responsibilities, friction that produces no value and steady frustration. Every redundant tool, overlapping role, and ambiguous reporting line is a small tax collected daily.
Mukhtar frames his own stance in plain terms. “I’m not anti-regulation,” he has written. “I’m pro-simplification.” The distinction matters. He is not arguing for cutting corners or stripping out controls that earn their keep. He is arguing against the slow drift toward complexity that serves nobody, where process multiplies because adding a step always feels safer than removing one.
Huang, Dimon, and Mukhtar are describing the same competitive edge from three vantage points. Complexity is the default state of any growing organization. Reducing it is a deliberate act of leadership, and the firms willing to do that work consistently tend to outrun the ones drowning in their own procedures.
