In 1916, Robert R. Updegraff published a 60-page business parable about a man called Oliver B. Adams. Adams was, by every account, unremarkable. His first employer described him as "rather stolid, not especially bright in appearance." His colleagues found him a little boring. He had no particular flair, no gift for the theatrical gesture. Within twenty years, he ran one of the most important advertising agencies in America.

The secret — if it can be called that — was a single habit. Whenever Adams encountered a business problem, he asked himself one question: what is the obvious thing to do here? Not the clever thing. Not the innovative thing. Not the thing that would impress the room. The obvious thing. And then he did it, while everyone else was busy constructing elaborate solutions to problems that didn't need elaborating.

Updegraff called this quality "obviousness." Adams's colleagues found it alternately baffling and infuriating. Here was a man with no particular technical skill, no sharp wit, no talent for performance, consistently solving problems that smarter people had failed to crack. The book is a short one, but the question it raises is not: why does doing the obvious thing turn out to be so hard?