Robert R. Updegraff ended his 1916 business parable with a story about a school composition. A boy is assigned the title "The Mountains of Holland." His entire essay reads: "There are no mountains in Holland." The teacher, presumably, did not give him full marks. The point Updegraff was making, after sixty pages of story, is that the secret to the most successful advertising man of his generation was not a secret at all.

The man in question — Oliver "Obvious" Adams — was, by the account of everyone who knew him, not clever. Not quick. Not particularly interesting to talk to. His colleagues couldn't understand why he kept solving problems they couldn't. His clients flew him across the country and then, when he delivered the answer, said: "Now, why in thunder couldn't some of us have thought of that?" The answer, Adams always implied, was that they had been too busy thinking.

This is the version of success that makes people uncomfortable. We are willing to accept that outcomes can be unlucky. We are deeply resistant to the idea that they can be unnecessarily complicated. That the reason the business isn't growing is not strategy, not execution, not resources — but that no one has been willing to say the obvious thing out loud.