Complexity kills growth. The 5As is the five-stage method for cutting it out and deciding what the business will actually do.
5As™ tells you what to do. CALIBRA™ tells you whether you are right. They run in sequence, not in competition. CALIBRA sits inside Assess, the first stage.
Quantify the complexity honestly. Most organisations badly underestimate their own, and the data usually tells a comforting story until someone insists otherwise.
Reduce to the irreducible truth. Most arrive with fifteen to twenty priorities. Effective ones leave with three. That reduction is a negotiated loss, not an analytical exercise, which is why most internal efforts die here.
Design the operating model to deliver it. Accountabilities, decision rights and resource allocation, so that decisions stop taking six months.
Mobilise. This stage is framed as launch and is in practice partly mourning: simplification kills projects people cared about and roles that signalled importance.
Make it permanent. Complexity returns through well-intentioned exceptions, so this stage is governance rather than communications.
Simplify: Try or Die sets out the method in full, with case studies including the Mulloon Institute, the Woolmark repositioning, Singapore's digital integration and Commonwealth Bank. Published March 2026.
If you would like a copy, or the executive summary, ask. If you would rather see the method applied to your own business first, start with a Commercial Read.
The 5As™ is the intellectual property of Robert B. Langtry.