A few years ago I co-authored Picnic, Lightning—a book for planners in the advertising business, about how to sharpen and sell ideas. This sequel, which started life as a series of LinkedIn posts and accidentally became a (sort-of) book, examines what gets in the way of great ideas and the people who have them. Why strategy and creativity are made more complicated than they need to be, who does the complicating and how to minimize or eradicate their influence.  The agents of overcomplication most often take the physical form of overpaid and underinformed executives (I should know, I was one), but while those individuals come and go, the root causes seem to stick around: complacency, laziness, ignorance, process, selfishness, fear. So these pages take on those six deadly sins (and holding companies, and Global Heads and agency leads and—perversely—white dog shit) and fight for creativity, simplicity, candor, courage, straightforwardness and humanity. Or try to, anyway.