General rule: if someone tells you that the solution to your problem involves complicated maneuvering and strategy they are probably not giving you the right answer.
Corollary: anyone can come up with a simple solution with no basis in fact and pretend they know what they are talking about.
I’ve recently spent some time rewatching House, MD on Netflix. It reminds me that there are times in life when things get complicated and messy. However, House only deals with a case a week – everything else is straightforward and uncomplicated. Even the cases that House takes he assumes that the answer is supposed to be simple at the beginning.
Complicated is a symptom that many very smart people fall into. They see a problem that they have lots of solutions for that work very well and instead of picking the best they throw all of them at the problem. It’s the classic bazooka to kill a fly issue.
This is the same reason that writers have editors and why writers cannot be editors. Writers write….often too much. Editors bring them back to the “just right” amount and keep things from getting off track.
Assume that anyone bringing you a complicated solution needs an editor and don’t be afraid to push back. While sometimes complicated is necessarily….usually it isn’t.