Is it time for your business to stop something that has run its course?

This article was published on June 25, 2020 in the online magazine The Innovation on Medium.

I’m a change agent at heart, and personality assessments reveal me to be overwhelmingly enterprising. If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

But hear me out. In working with lots of different kinds of clients over the years, I have observed that just about every business has a product or service, or an asset, or some focus or obligation, that it holds onto for dear life. Even though that thing has ceased delivering value and, in some cases, is getting in the way of progress. This is a call to muster the courage to stop.

It’s a widely held belief that a business must grow in order to succeed, and the default way of thinking about growth is to add. New product lines, diversified offerings, acquired assets, additional service offerings — all of them are, by their sheer nature, doing more.

But does your team know when it’s time to stop doing something? Or even how to explore that possibility? It’s fair to say that most ambitious leaders are better at adding organizational obligations rather than subtracting them. It’s as though acknowledging that the team can’t do it all is an admission of some management deficiency.

Yet despite the discomfort that cold hard prioritization can cause, it can be an amazing, terrific, wonderful thing. Nothing sets up Opportunity Y for success quite like willingness to set aside Legacy Activity X to actually make room for it. It frees the troops to perform and grants them the necessary capacity to focus their ingenuity and drive.

Does your team see any of the below three signs? If so, take time to ponder the possibility, however remote, that it’s time to just stop.

1.Customer or marketplace insights tell you it’s time. Listen closely to what the key indicators for your business are saying. Perhaps your number of new customers is on the decline, or average order value is diminishing. Or you’re experiencing decreased client engagement in a longstanding service offering. Maybe focus groups are hinting at changing stakeholder expectations, or your social media feels deluged with customer complaints.

It seems obvious that these sorts of insights might signal that something needs to change. But businesses — because they’re run by human beings — are change-averse. Any of the above may be a sign that it’s time to explore sunsetting that thing, whatever it is, and make way for what’s new, innovative, and next.

2.Your goals tell you it’s time. Take the top 2–3 measurable things that your team must achieve this or next fiscal year. Then take an hour or two to run every current product, program, project, or other major commitment through a “Must do / could do / nice to have” exercise, with those goals in mind. Be brutally frank. There’s a good chance that everything your team does today won’t make it into the “must do” column. When that happens, talk about what you might do about that new insight. Be courageous in the conversation about if it’s time to let something go.

I recently had the opportunity to watch a brilliant CEO Dr. Laura DeFinamake the decision to stop something. Her organization, the world-renowned Cooper Institute, divested a line of business in which there was a great deal of heritage, pride, and brand equity. And sunk costs. Yet she and her colleagues acknowledged the truth that the market had changed, and goals had evolved. So she divested. She read the signs and understood the value of making room. (I oversaw the integration of those divested assets into their new home. I became a real fan of Dr. DeFina’s leadership acumen in the process.)

3.Your team is begging for mercy. This is the surest sign of all that it’s time for a stop. But it’s the sign that business leaders seem least inclined to take seriously. It’s extraordinarily unlikely that the people who got your business to the great place where it is today are slackers, or are trying to take the easy way out. If they tell you that balls are at risk of dropping, then count on it as fact. Make the tough priority calls that your team needs so you can keep your good people humming along, delivering, and fulfilled by doing so.

Photo purchased on Shutterstock

Prioritization is some of the thorniest, riskiest work that leader face. It’s easy to procrastinate and tempting to avoid. But so much in the world is changing so fast that there is something, quite possibly multiple things, that your team or entire business should just stop. Find those things and grant them the sunset they deserve. Do it in service to focusing precious resources on that next great thing that will keep your business relevant and thriving.