Most leaders try to get ahead by adding. The ones who actually pull ahead are subtracting on purpose.
Walk into almost any organization trying to improve, and you’ll see the same instinct: add. Add a tool. Add a meeting. Add a process, a metric, a channel, a ritual. The unspoken belief is that progress is additive — that more effort, more structure, and more activity eventually compound into more results.
But here’s what most teams never stop to examine: a huge percentage of what they do every day exists for one reason only. It’s normal. Nobody chose it on purpose. It accumulated. And it’s quietly taxing the team’s energy, attention, and speed.
The leaders who break out of the pack rarely do it by out-adding everyone else. They do it by being willing to remove what everyone else is afraid to touch.
Normal is not a strategy. It’s just unquestioned accumulation.
Every team carries a layer of “this is how it’s done” that no one can actually justify. The recurring meeting that lost its purpose two quarters ago. The report nobody reads. The workflow built for a problem you no longer have. None of it survives because it works. It survives because removing it feels risky, and keeping it feels safe.
That instinct — keep it because it’s normal — is exactly what keeps good teams stuck at good instead of moving to exceptional.
Subtraction takes more courage than addition.
Adding is easy to defend. You can point to the new thing and say, “Look, we’re doing more.” Subtraction is harder, because the moment you remove something, you’re exposed. If it goes well, the credit is invisible. If it goes badly, the blame is obvious.
So most leaders keep adding — not because addition is working, but because it’s safer to be blamed for doing too much than for removing the wrong thing.
The catalyst does the opposite. A catalyst looks at the accumulated normal and asks the question most people avoid: Does this still earn its place?
The discipline is in the question, not the deleting.
This isn’t a case for tearing things down for the sake of it. Removing the wrong thing is just as costly as keeping the wrong thing. The skill isn’t subtraction — it’s discernment. Knowing which norms are load-bearing and which are just heavy.
The leaders who get this right build a habit around one recurring question: Are we doing this because it works, or because it’s what we’ve always done? They ask it about meetings, about processes, about their own calendars, about the way the entire operation is structured. And when the honest answer is “because it’s normal,” they’re willing to act on it.
That willingness — to question the default and remove what no longer belongs — is one of the quietest, most underrated forms of leadership there is.
The edge isn’t in what you’ll add this year. It’s in what you’re finally willing to remove.
So before you build the next thing, look hard at what you’re carrying. Some of your best growth this year won’t come from a new initiative. It’ll come from the courage to delete a normal that stopped serving you a long time ago.
What’s one “normal” your team is keeping only because no one has stopped to ask if it still belongs?
Want Michael to bring this kind of clarity to your team? Michael Creed helps leaders simplify complexity, build trust, and move from activity to meaningful performance. Explore keynotes and workshops at https://creedspeaks.com/deep-dive.