Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Premise -- Only Fair Delivery
Review: ... The title intrigued me and a quick glance inside looked interesting. I bought it on impulse.I approached the book with high expectations-- in retrospect, too high. Mr. Jensen does articulate his core message: simplifying is the key to dealing with information overload; the lack of time to do all that's demanded of us; and to respect and empower coworkers. But, in my opinion, the book soon runs out of steam. It becomes repetitive and dwells overly long on the obvious. The result: the book is at least 1/3 too long. Mr. Jensen clearly understands and explains the power of simplicity. He seems less clear in understanding the power of focus and brevity. (On the other hand, any author who quotes Buckaroo Bonzai has a lot going for him.)
Rating: 
Summary: For all those mired in and creating information overload . .
Review: Jensen's Simplicity is one of the more important books of the decade and worth reading repeatedly. The Know, Feel, Use, Do Succeed model for communication is powerful, simple, easy to remember, and it works!! I find myself not only using it, but teaching it to others. Jensen's work has a research base - a study of what makes work so complex that includes a comparison between all organizations and top performers/most admired. Tools in this book such as the Message Map (Storytelling as a business tool - conflict, transition, climax, and close) are complementary to Tichy's teachable point of view. Improve your results with the "bankers" who fund your work, the colleagues who will become your allies, and the implementers without whom you could not succeed.
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Summary: Delivers on What¿s Important
Review: This is one of the most indispensable books everyone working the New Economy must read. Not because it pretends to be the next big eThing. It's not. Not because it's laden with newspeak eBabble. (Definitely isn't!) Simplicity is important in that it's about the basics of an economy that's based on sense-making, filtering and understanding what's noise and what's important. Jensen begins: "Platitudes aside, our biggest limit is no longer the reach of our imagination. It's our ability to order, make sense of, and connect everything demanding our attention...How we create clarity." He then delivers the tools and strategies that both individuals organizations need to change in how they use people's time and attention. Mostly because it's practical and useful, Simplicity deserves your attention. Jensen says that the book's goal is to "drive new discussions about what it means to lead and work smarter." It will. It has.
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Summary: Must-Reading for Employees, Free Agents and Leaders
Review: This book is must-reading for anyone who needs to make sense of everything coming at them at warp speed. If you're an employee or free agent, you'll find the tools you'll need to cut through day-to-day clutter. If you're a leader, ignore this book at your own peril. Jensen shows how storytelling, conversations and making connections for people are critical, and how the future of companies will look like the Net -- leaders will have to build tools and structures for business units of one...the individual. I've already gotten over a dozen copies for the team leaders I work with. It's that helpful! Bonus: For me, the design is a big plus too. One-page summaries. "Simple Notes," "Getting Started" tips and large type emphasizing key points and people's quotes.
Rating: 
Summary: Too confusing, hard time reading it
Review: I liked the idea. But the book is very bad, badly laid out, badly written, and very hard to just read. So much for simplicity.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely useful for smarter speed
Review: Bill Jensen has written a book which is extremely useful for seeing the connections between how we communicate, how we use time, organize work, build companies, and how we lead. He cuts through the usual sandbox sound bites about making things simpler and asks us to take a more holistic approach. Simplicity is about smarter speed. "Change all you want," he says, "just know that execution happens at the speed of sense-making." What may be Simplicity's true legacy is how Jensen connects sense-making, meaning-making and the use of people's time to how we build corporate infrastructures and tools. Read passively, this part of the book might appear uneven. Think deeper about what he's saying, and it profoundly rocks the accountabilities of leaders and companies! Get this book!
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Summary: Buy it. Use it. Change how you work.
Review: What makes this book so valuable is that you'll really use it! Written in easy-to-read "kitchen table English," Bill Jensen delivers on two fronts: Simplicity is both a how-to guidebook and a powerful tool for changing how we think about knowledge work. For example: My team and I have vastly improved how we communicate using Jensen's five behavioral questions. And our senior execs just used the book at an offsite to discuss how to build a simpler company so people can work smart enough fast enough. Buy it. Use it. Change how you work.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that needs better coherence
Review: I'm one of the many individuals who worked for large corporations before but recently switched to the fast moving internet startup environment. With the speed of the internet, better communications and team work is getting more important than ever. This is the reason I looked into this book. The book does offer some useful ways to simplify communications and corporate cultures, but all the paragraphs are not written in a cohesive manner, that I have a hard time following and apprecieting the book! Having read great business books written by authors like Tom Peters and Seth Godin, I'm used to the style of clean, coheresive, and interesting writing style. Didn't mean to give this book a 2 star while it receives great reviews from the other reader. But I'd like to be honest rather than conformative.
Rating:
Summary: Savoring Simplicity
Review: I am in the process of reading -- I should say savoring -- this book for the 3rd time. It is my favorite gift to give to clients and colleagues. "The Five Questions" alone are worth more than the price of the book. I keep them posted next to my computer so that I can easily integrate clear, simple communication into my daily life, even when I'm overwhelmed by an accellerated pace and workload. My thanks to Bill Jensen for so clearly articulating what I have known all along. I honor his teaching. We all benefit when we focus on respecting each other's time and attention.
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Summary: Doing Simpler, Smarter, Energised Work & Things That Matter
Review: The high quality of 'Simplicity' stands out immediately- it's truly useful, multi-disciplinary and multi-level, supported by deep evidence, very attractively presented & reader-centric, and very up-to-date & net-aware without suffering vendor/consulting or armchair-theorist bias. Suitable for all levels within business, consulting and academia, 'Simplicity' is filled with insights, exercises and tools to help clarify, simplify and energise towards smarter companies (leaving time for things that matter). The concise, provocative, action-centred content covers: *Section 1 (the aha)- defining simplicity, complexity and the need for change. *Section 2 (simpler workdays)- using time, planning, contracting, listening & scanning, and engaging. *Section 3 (simpler companies)- customer-centric knowledge, building feeling of trust, content design for decision use, project design to do something, and succeeding with simpler navigation. *Section 4 (simpler futurework)- changing the structure of companies. A few favorite parts include: defining business complexity (causes include: integration of change, knowledge management, communication, technology and unclear goals & objectives); the focus on customer-facing associates driving restructuring processes; the behavioral communication model (relevance? specific actions? measures & consequences? tools & support? benefits to self?); and the message map for storytelling (our burning platform, where we are, success this year, and our destination). A key strength is the presentation (font sizes & emphasis, illustration, chapter punchlines, tables, exercises, tools, lack of jargon, and sufficient anecdotes), and great potential for use as a 'work book' rather than shelf-book. Many of the common-sense examples and suggestions span the same domain as 'Futurize Your Enterprises' by Siegel (amongst others), with both more evidence and more useful tools. Recommended highly for getting rid of the "noise", and best using your 1440 minutes per day.
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