How Doing Less Can Accomplish More
A few years ago, I listened to a speaker describe a big win for Virginia’s Economic Development Group. Lego was coming to town to build a manufacturing plant. It was the kind of headline every politician and business leader wanted. But shortly after the announcement, local manufacturers started showing up at the development office with a problem. They didn’t have enough workers. The region hadn’t planned for the sudden drain on the labor pool. The win provided good PR, but the infrastructure behind it wasn’t ready to handle the weight.
The leader of that foundation eventually realized that to be known for something great, you have to say no to a lot of quick wins things along the way. You often have to look bad in the short term to look good in the long term. This is the hardest part of leadership. It is easy to say yes to a good idea. It’s much harder to say, “not now.”
Most organizations try to execute far too many priorities at once. We are told that more is better and that a long list of initiatives shows ambition. In reality, the math of distraction is working against you. Studies on working memory suggest that when the brain tries to balance too many competing goals, it can’t execute any of them at a high level. I have seen this play out in dozens of companies. When people work on more than three things at once, there is an exponentially higher rate of failure.
The execution of a plan is a marathon, not a sprint. If you start a race at top speed with ten different weights tied to your waist, you will run out of gas by the third quarter. A better approach is to stagger them. If you have twelve big things to accomplish this year, tackle three per quarter. This allows you to go deep and ensure each initiative is actually installed and working before you move on.
I saw this at a manufacturing company when we implemented a suggestion box. Prior to our arrival, the company had a complete lack of feedback from employees and a high degree of mistrust. We didn’t just open the box; we committed to reading every suggestion and giving an answer. Sometimes the answer was, “That’s a great idea, but we are working on these three other things right now. We are going to put yours on the list for next quarter.” People were happy because they were heard and appreciated, even if their idea wasn’t implemented immediately. They understood that the leadership had a limited bandwidth and was betting on the things that would have the biggest impact.
Another trap leaders fall into is “attention residue.” Even when a project is supposedly finished, they keep wondering if it’s actually working or if your people developed a workaround. If you have ten projects in that state, you have no mental space left to lead. Real discipline requires sticking with an initiative long enough to ensure the results are sustained, then moving fully onto what’s next. This might mean getting up the day after a change (at the exact moment when you are eager to get the project off your plate and move on) and verifying it again. Then doing it a third day. That takes time and bandwidth. If you don’t limit the number of initiatives, you will never get to that last 5% of execution where the actual result lives.
Practical Leadership Moves:
- The Rule of Three: Audit your current initiatives. If you have more than three, pick the three with the most holistic impact—not just financial, but the ones that alleviate the most frustration for your team.
- The Breather: When a project is done, wait two weeks before starting the next one. Let the change settle and give your employees a chance to breathe.
- Saying No with Appreciation: When a good idea comes forward that isn’t a priority, tell the person why. Explain the bandwidth limits so they don’t feel their idea was ignored.
The Takeaway: You don’t lose an annual plan all at once. You lose it when focus disappears. And focus is always a leadership decision.
Part 4 of a 12-part series exploring the execution disciplines that determine whether strategy turns into results. Each article examines a critical behavior, mindset, or operational principle that shapes a plan’s ability to succeed once it meets the realities of day-to-day execution.
