Behavior Hacking Ep 5: Complexity Kills Growth. Here’s How to Fix It.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Paul Stansik: So, Nate, you and I have met a couple of times ahead of this conversation. The words that keep coming up—the big ideas—are simplicity and operational rhythm. Why do we keep talking about those? And why do they matter so much?

Nate Nasralla: Because they’re the hallmark of what we try to do whenever we work with a team. This is what they’re craving. This is what we need to bring: simplicity.

Paul Stansik: CROs, CEOs, CMOs — I've never heard so many voices telling them the right way to do their job. Best practices, playbooks, frameworks — everyone's talking at them, and all these voices start competing. Anytime you can cut through that and make growth simple, there’s a big appetite for it.

Nate Nasralla: Exactly. I’d say that’s the mark of a seasoned operator or leader: the ability to bring simplicity. To strip out the noise and chaos. When you think about your work with the companies in your portfolio, from a private equity perspective, how do you see this play out? How does someone become a seasoned operator by bringing more simplicity into their work?

Paul Stansik: The best CEOs, CROs, and CMOs I know aren’t afraid to make growth uncomfortably basic. They’re willing to say: This is the problem stopping us from growing faster. We either need to create more pipeline, close more pipeline, or fix our retention problem. The management teams that focus on one of those issues usually make real progress. They start building a better business. The trap is trying to fix everything at once.

Nate Nasralla: So if I pulled out your advice for a new leader, it would be: You don’t need to show up with a massive plan and complex dashboards. Pick one, two, maybe three things. If you do that, you’ll actually communicate experience and mastery.

Paul Stansik: Right. The diagnostic power available to a CRO or CMO has never been higher. And the allure of building the "Skynet" version of your go-to-market measurement system is real. But before you build that plan—before you build that dashboard — you need a diagnosis. And a good diagnosis takes a stance. It identifies the biggest challenge or opportunity that’ll help you “level up” as a company. For new leaders, my number one piece of advice—especially before a first board meeting—is learning how to take that stance effectively. Usually, it’s as simple as saying: "Hey team, this is the problem. Here’s the data that backs it up. I want your permission to focus only on this for the next six months. Can I have it?" As an investor, I get excited when I hear that. Because I’ve seen it—when a team has focus and commitment, things start getting better.

Nate Nasralla: Simplicity is choosing what you’ll ignore.

Paul Stansik: It’s about stance taking. And that means committing to some things and leaving others until later — or leaving them behind entirely. You can tell when this gets missed. It’s when you’re 50 pages into a board deck, looking at a bunch of metrics that tell you what’s happening but not what the problem is.

Nate Nasralla: Right. Making things uncomfortably basic is actually hard. Take a deal review. A great sales leader should be able to get up to speed on a key account in 60 seconds. And that actually takes a deep understanding of what’s going on in the deal. Do we know enough? Have we uncovered the real risks? What’s the timing? What’s left to be done? If you can communicate that in one minute, on a single page, that’s an elegant deal review.

Paul Stansik: That reminds me of the Mark Twain quote: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” It applies to board decks. It applies to business plans. It applies to what your buyer needs in the room when you’re not there to advocate for yourself.

Nate Nasralla: Funny you mention that. Off camera, I showed you an email from one of our customers. They just ran two days of workshops for what’s going to be a major deal, an eight-figure account. And the approval request? One page. The board deck? A single slide. That’s what people miss about simplicity — it actually takes more effort. And that’s why it’s so often overlooked.

Paul Stansik: Exactly. People recognize the work that goes into distilling things down. I see it all the time. When vendors make it easy for me to understand and advocate for them, I want to work with them. So why isn’t everyone doing this? Why isn’t everyone on the simplicity bandwagon? Because in sales and marketing, things tend to be way too complex.

Nate Nasralla: Hopefully, we just tackled the first reason: complexity bias. People assume more complexity is better. The second reason? The world around us pulls us into distraction. If you just show up and go with the flow, you get dragged away from simplicity. And third? We don’t always have strong frameworks to lean on. When we talk about things like What does an effective board deck look like? — we shouldn’t have to reinvent it for every meeting. The best teams use frameworks that guide their thinking so they can focus on the essence of what matters.

Paul Stansik: I’ve got two favorite frameworks. One is philosophical, one is tactical. Sometimes, you need to step back from all the jargon and complexity. I call this one The Hundred. Imagine there are 100 perfect prospects out there. They look exactly like your best customers—the ones who bought quickly, paid well, and stuck around. With today’s technology, you can identify them. So, why haven’t they bought yet? Usually, it’s because they can’t find you, they don’t trust you, or they’re just not ready. If you solve that problem, you unlock growth. We use a system in our portfolio called Less Data, More Often. It’s built around a single question: "Did we have a good week or a bad week?" And we answer it with just a few simple metrics: Are we going to hit this quarter’s number? Which deals matter most? Are we creating enough pipeline? How’s the sales team performing? Some teams rely on gut instinct. Others use metrics. The best leaders simplify their data diet so it’s easy to get, easy to interpret, and actually sparks the right conversations. Because at the end of the day, data is only as good as the conversations it creates.