The Tyranny of More: Why Strategic Subtraction Is Our Undoing

The slide flickered, momentarily blinding me as the projector adjusted. Twelve. That was the number. Twelve ‘Top Priorities’ for the quarter, emblazoned in confident Arial, each bullet point a fresh jolt of anxiety. The collective sigh in the room was almost audible, a low, guttural murmur that barely registered against the backdrop of forced enthusiasm. My coffee, once a comforting warmth, now tasted like ash. We were doing it again.

The Addiction to Addition

That all-hands meeting, with its dizzying array of ‘vital’ initiatives, isn’t just a quarterly event; it’s a symptom. A systemic fever. We’ve built an entire corporate culture around the worship of addition, convinced that ‘more’ always translates to ‘better.’ It’s a collective delusion, one I’ve personally contributed to more times than I care to admit, waving the banner of ‘innovation’ while silently watching existing, promising projects languish. The unspoken mantra is: if you’re not starting something new, you’re stagnating. If your team isn’t perpetually swamped, they’re underutilized. This warped logic pushes us towards a self-defeating cycle, where capacity is always maxed out, but meaningful progress remains elusive.

We optimize everything: our algorithms, our supply chains, the exact shade of blue on a corporate logo. Yet, the most crucial decision-the one that dictates where our finite energy, talent, and capital actually go-often remains stubbornly unoptimized. Or worse, it’s driven by a primal fear of missing out. The competitor is doing X? We must do X, plus Y, and Z. The market trend points towards A? Let’s launch A, B, and C, just in case. This isn’t strategy; it’s scattershot, born from a deep-seated insecurity that equates saying ‘no’ with weakness, rather than seeing it as the ultimate expression of strategic clarity.

I thought of Cora V.K., a precision welder I’d met years ago. She worked on things that either held together or spectacularly failed, no in-between. Her job, she once told me, wasn’t just about making perfect welds; it was about knowing exactly where *not* to weld, where to leave the raw material untouched, to respect its inherent strength. Every arc, every bead, was a strategic act of focus. You wouldn’t ask Cora to weld 48 joints in 8 different places if the blueprint only called for 8 crucial ones. The extra 40 wouldn’t add value; they’d add weight, potential points of failure, and ultimately, a compromised structure. And yet, here we were, building organizational structures that felt like a child’s over-engineered treehouse, full of unnecessary planks and wobbly supports, each one a ‘priority’ for some department.

The Dilution of Potential

The real cost isn’t just wasted resources, though $878,008 wasted on a pointless feature certainly smarts. The greater tragedy is the dilution of potential. When you have twelve ‘top’ priorities, you have zero. Think about it. Each individual project, if it had received the undivided attention of a focused team, might have truly soared. Instead, resources are stretched thin, talent is spread across too many initiatives, and energy dissipates into a dozen mediocre efforts. It’s the corporate equivalent of trying to boil 8 pots of water simultaneously on a single burner – nothing ever truly reaches a rolling boil. Everything just simmers unsatisfactorily.

We talk about ‘optimization’ endlessly, don’t we? Optimize workflows, optimize delivery, optimize market share. But the most fundamental optimization – the decision to simply *do less* – often remains untouched. It’s like we’re building a fantastic, high-efficiency engine, then bolting 238 unnecessary accessories onto it, convinced each one adds ‘synergy.’ The irony isn’t lost on me that even a simple appliance, like a clothes dryer, benefits from design decisions that pare away the superfluous. The best ones aren’t trying to also wash your dishes; they focus on drying with precision and efficiency. Bomba, as a client, understands this implicitly with their curated catalog; every item earns its place through utility and quality, not just by being another entry on a sprawling list.

I remember one project, years ago, where we insisted on integrating a social media sharing feature into an internal-facing tool. It seemed like a ‘no-brainer’ at the time, something everyone else was doing. We spent $878,008 on development, testing, and compliance, only to realize, 8 months later, that nobody used it. Nobody *needed* to use it. It was a feature born from FOMO, not from actual user need, and I was right there, advocating for its inclusion, convinced it was ‘value-add.’ A painful, expensive lesson in the fallacy of addition, a stark reminder that even with experience, it’s easy to fall back into the ‘more is better’ trap.

The Fear of Emptiness

It’s a bizarre cultural artifact, this corporate obsession with ‘more.’ You tell someone you’re taking on 8 new initiatives, and they nod approvingly, maybe even congratulate you on your ‘hustle.’ Tell them you’re *eliminating* 8 existing, underperforming projects to focus intently on two, and you’re suddenly fielding questions about ‘lost opportunities’ and ‘unrealized potential.’ It’s as if the very act of subtraction implies failure, a confession of poor judgment, rather than a brave act of strategic clarity. We’ve been conditioned to equate activity with progress, volume with value, even when the evidence screams otherwise. This isn’t just about productivity; it’s about a deeper, systemic fear of emptiness, of not filling every available slot on the calendar or every line on the budget.

This fear isn’t abstract; it manifests in daily agony. Teams are perpetually in reactive mode, jumping from fire to fire. Creativity withers under the pressure of impossible deadlines. The sheer cognitive load of juggling 8 distinct, complex priorities cripples our ability to think deeply, to innovate, to genuinely solve problems. We become task-doers, not strategists. And then, when the quarterly results inevitably fall short, we don’t question the *number* of initiatives; we blame execution, or market conditions, or “lack of synergy.” The feedback loop is broken, perpetually reinforcing the flawed assumption that more attempts somehow guarantee more success.

The Courage to Subtract

What if the bravest thing we could do was simply… stop?

Stop starting new things until the old things are finished, polished, and delivering real value. Stop adding features that nobody asked for. Stop saying ‘yes’ out of habit or fear. The initial discomfort would be immense, no doubt. The corporate ecosystem would recoil, asking, ‘But what about innovation? What about staying ahead?’ And that’s where the counter-intuitive truth lies: true innovation, lasting impact, and genuine competitive advantage come from a relentless, disciplined focus on a few truly excellent things. It’s a radical act of simplification, requiring a courage rarely celebrated in quarterly reviews.

Imagine a world where teams have the space, the mental bandwidth, and the dedicated time to truly master their craft, to dive deep into a problem and emerge with an elegant, impactful solution. Where decisions are made with the clarity of a precision welder, knowing that every addition must serve a profound purpose, and every subtraction clears the path for true strength. It’s not about being idle; it’s about being deliberate. It’s about replacing frantic motion with purposeful movement.

Perhaps the true measure of our leadership isn’t in how much we can pile onto our plates, but in how skillfully we can clear them. Not just for ourselves, but for our teams, for our organizations. It’s about building in the negative space, recognizing that sometimes, the greatest strength comes not from what you add, but from what you courageously decide to remove. What will you choose to subtract?