The-Power-of-Letting-Go-Why-Companies-Must-Stop-Doing-Things-And-How
Strategies to Eliminate the Unnecessary and Unlock Organizational Potential
The typical company is constantly churning out ideas for new products, markets, and processes. As a result, the typical manager’s life is cluttered and complicated. Many managers and leaders are now spending more time fighting the daily fires than in work and ideation that truly add value and drive positive organizational outcomes.
How did we get here?
There are three reasons for this situation. The first is what we term the tyranny of history. Organizations do things the way they do simply because they have done so for the past 10 or 15 years. Actions and processes become ritualized and set in stone.
The second is that most humans are averse to change. Once they settle into a comfortable and predictable pattern of doing things, they tend to resist anything that breaks that pattern. Such resistance can take the route of explicit resistance—an open challenge to change; or passive resistance—an internal opposition that can range from peaceful non-cooperation at one end to devious sabotage at the other.
The third is the “It’s my baby” syndrome. Most initiatives and processes, at some stage, become someone’s baby. Managers and leaders can develop a deep attachment to their babies, interpreting any attempt to move forward from them in personal and negative terms.
The importance of stopping doing things
It’s hard to stop doing things. But, in today’s dynamic environment, stopping doing things is more important than ever for four reasons.
First, if organizations don’t stop doing things, they will be left with competencies and processes that were designed for a different environment. What they are good at will not match what they need to be good at.
Second, not stopping doing things leads to cluttered desks and cluttered minds. So much time and effort are spent on things that have minimal impact that many important developments are pushed to the periphery.
Third, not stopping doing things takes the focus away from changing how things are done and doing new things. The organization becomes static and falls behind in the morphing business environment.
Finally, when organizations don’t stop doing things, they end up doing so many things that they are not doing anything really well. They lose their focus and competitive edge, falling behind every day.
How to stop doing things
Stopping doing things is not just a matter of top management waving a flag and making the ask. In fact, such an approach can be counterproductive because it can make employees nervous about their routines being upended. But there are a range of actions that organizations can take to make it happen:
Leading from the top: Top management can publicly highlight how they have stopped doing things. For example, they can publicly declare that every meeting with managers is now scheduled by default for a half-hour, with longer meetings being explicitly justified to all participants.
Stop doing some universally despised things; There are some things, such as requiring a multi-factor authentication to access publicly available information, that all employees despise. Get rid of the requirement. But also accompany such initiatives with a widely disseminated message that the organization is on a mission to simplify operations by stopping doing things. This approach will help get people on board.
Question every regularly scheduled meeting: Many employees spend much of their day in “meeting hell.” Question every meeting. Stop every meeting that accomplishes little, is duplicated by another meeting, or can be handled through a couple of simple emails.
Challenge the strategy profile of the organization: Now we are getting into the weighty stuff. At the strategic level, organizations often excel at things their customers and market really don’t care about. Cutting back on those things can help organizations invest in things that customers do care about, creating a more competitive company.
Collect ideas about what to stop doing from employees: Unlike the C-Suite, employees work where the “rubber meets the road” and have a good idea of what day-to-day value creation and delivery looks like. As a result, they can provide high-value insights into what the organization can stop doing. Often, following their advice can both simplify their jobs and even increase the value added to customers.
Organizations can save money by stopping doing things. Simultaneously, stopping doing things can create the opportunity to focus on doing other things that drive efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase profits. For example, one client we worked with stopped doing a range of things for customers which they mistakenly thought customers cared about. They shifted the delivered value profile to one that really resonated with customers, driving increased loyalty and profitability.
How SLK Catalyst Partners can help
As experts in this area, we can help by:
Conducting a whole-company audit to demarcate initiatives and processes that the company should stop doing.
Ensure that the metrics the company tracks are relevant to—and aligned with—the company’s strategy, while getting rid of misaligned and superfluous metrics.
Ensure that managerial attention and resources are focused on the critical processes and initiatives that are central to the company’s success.
Provide execution support for these changes, to the extent the company requires such support.
For more information on how SLK Catalyst Partners can help, visit SLKCatalystPartners.com.