MURA: The clunky acronym that can revolutionize your work

After years of working with companies like Pfizer, Dell, and USAA, I saw how employees were overwhelmed by complexity and desperate to cut through it. But where to begin? Simplification needed a methodical—yet simple—approach.

We dug deep into how teams handled complexity, discovering that simple frameworks were virtually nonexistent. Beyond Six Sigma and Agile, teams lacked a straightforward approach to everyday work and didn’t want another lengthy, multistep process. We also realized that teams viewed simplification only as deletion, missing other paths to simpler outcomes.

Enter MURA. I developed MURA in 2015 to give teams a practical approach to making work easier. Yes, it’s a clunky acronym—one that sounds like an old printer brand, not the key to transforming your work. But MURA provides an effective, memorable framework for simplifying tasks and projects. It’s easy to apply and keeps complexity at bay. Imagine streamlining everything from reports to big, tangled problems by applying these four principles:

• M – Minimal
• U – Understandable
• R – Repeatable
• A – Accessible

MURA is a quick litmus test that helps you eliminate waste and create simplicity. Let’s break it down.

M is for minimal

If you take away only one thing from MURA, let it be this: simplicity is subtractive. Minimalism is about removing unnecessary steps, processes, and information to reveal essentials. It doesn’t mean doing the bare minimum—it means refining work down to what’s necessary.

Southwest Airlines provides a classic example. While most airlines operated multiple types of planes, Southwest committed to one: the Boeing 737. This strategy created uniformity, allowing crews to focus on a single model, simplifying maintenance and reducing delays.

Applying minimalism to your work could mean trimming your to-do list or changing a weekly meeting to a 15-minute email summary. Cut down, pare back, and watch productivity rise.

U is for understandable

It’s not enough for something to be streamlined—it also has to be comprehensible. Complexity sneaks in when ideas get buried under jargon or unnecessary details. Richard Branson of Virgin champions a rule for this: If a proposal can’t be summed up on the back of an envelope, it’s probably too complicated.

When Fidelity applied this principle, they halved their legal contracts, eliminated jargon, and created templates usable across departments. If you can’t explain your project to a coworker in two sentences, it’s time to simplify.

R is for repeatable

If a simplified process isn’t repeatable, it’s just a one-hit wonder. Repeatability means designing tasks and workflows so they can be reliably reproduced. No more reinventing the wheel—just a smooth, predictable process that can be scaled and shared.

Think of Starbucks. Part of their brand’s strength is a repeatable experience: every latte follows the same recipe, creating consistency and predictability.

In the workplace, this might look like creating templates for reports, scripts for meetings, or routines that streamline each new task.

A is for accessible

Simplicity is as much about opening doors as it is about closing them. Accessibility means making things clear, easy to find, and available to those who need them. When people have easy access to information, they work faster and more confidently.

Google, for example, has opened up its source code, inviting others to build on their work and innovate further.

In your work, accessibility might look like creating a shared folder with resources your team can use or writing clear summaries that can easily be shared.

How to put MURA to work every day

To incorporate MURA into your daily work, treat it as a checklist. For each project, ask yourself:

• Is this Minimal? What can I eliminate?
• Is it Understandable? Can it be explained in a sentence?
• Is it Repeatable? Is there a process I can standardize?
• Is it Accessible? Can those who need it access it easily?

Let’s say you’re tasked with producing a weekly report that typically involves 10 steps. By applying MURA, you might realize some sections are redundant, some terms are overly technical, and there’s no consistent template. So, streamline the report, simplify the language, create a template, and share it with your team.

That’s exactly what teams at USAA did when using MURA. They simplified contracts, reports, and project plans. MURA became a common language for teams tackling complex work; some even made MURA stickers to remind them of the acronym in their daily work.

MURA is more than an acronym—it’s a philosophy for transforming complexity into clarity. By focusing on Minimal, Understandable, Repeatable, and Accessible, you’re giving yourself and your team a straightforward framework for simplification.

So, next time you’re bogged down by a project or tangled in a convoluted process, remember MURA. Cut out the unnecessary, get clear, make it repeatable, and open doors for accessibility.

With MURA, less really is more.