Subtract for Success: The Art of Doing More with Less | Leidy Klotz

0:01Hi, I'm Joel Miller, and this is the Business Accelerator podcast. Our show to help busy, but growth-minded small business owners just like you scale yourself and your business so you can win at work and succeed in life. It's what we call the double win. And this week, I want to focus on a major obstacle preventing business owners from achieving it. The sheer amount of stuff they have to manage. I'm talking about meetings, people, processes, and products. What if we could all just do more with less? That's the big idea behind the book Subtract by University of Virginia Professor Leidy Klotz. I wanted to talk with him about how business owners keep adding when they ought to subtract and how they can shift their perspective and start seeing the delete key as their secret weapon for success.

0:49I think you'll especially love his description of one tactic, meeting doomsday, that can free up hours on your calendar every week. Let's jump in.

1:05Limitations exist in all sorts of business environments, but they probably feel, I think, to a lot of our listeners, more acute in a small business kind of space. How can business owners think of their limitations rather than negative as actually beneficial? Yeah, I think there's this just tendency to think that more is better, right? And that's some of the basis of my research and my book is kind of fighting against that where, hey, yeah, sometimes more is better. But that doesn't mean that less can't be better, too. So I guess like one of the first fundamental ways to kind of fight against that is to just remember that, hey, you know, less can can be a disadvantage in some cases, but it can also be an advantage in some cases.

1:52And the trick is, you know, figuring out which are which. Are there any like heuristics people can use to make that determination for themselves, especially since we default to assuming one is better than the other? Yeah, I mean, one heuristic is just to, like you said, we have a heuristic that we're using that defaults us to saying adding is better. So we can give ourselves reminders to say, hey, when is when might subtracting be better? and also kind of building subtraction into your processes. Like one of your previous episodes, I think, was talking about kind of effectively start, stop, continue as strategic planning, right?

2:30And the stop is an example of reminding yourself that, hey, subtracting is an option here too. So thinking about the important times that you make decisions and then forcing yourself to think about subtraction subtraction is a way to kind of overcome our what our mental default would be without doing that. Let's talk about that mental default for a minute. We talk about more being better as just kind of a default setting for people. What's contributing to that? Why is that feel like the default programming? Yeah, there are a lot of reasons for any behavior, as your listeners know. But I think, you know, one of the first ones that you go to is biological or what's helped us pass down our genes over time.

3:12And certainly, you know, more food has been better stockpiling resources has been better in the past. Also, I think one that's probably even more relevant to, to high achievers in the business world is just this desire to display competence, right? We want to be able to show that we're doing something and what it wasn't surprising to me that people have that desire, but it's surprising how biological it is, right? And so, you know, there's those bowerbirds, they're the birds that build ceremonial nests. So the male bowerbird will build a fancy nest, the female bowerbirds go and look at which nests they like the most and decide which male to mate with based on the quality of the nest, which all is sort of making sense.

3:58But then the female goes and builds a nest to raise the young, right? So the whole point of that first nest is just to show, hey, this Bowerbird can effectively interact with the world. And it, you know, it applies to males and females, it applies to humans and to Bowerbirds. You know, one of the ways that we that we have this biological desire to display competence, and it's even been extended to task completion, right. And so, you know, sending out another email or, you know, sending paper bills instead of making your process electronic. I mean, those are things that part of the reason it's hard to subtract those things is because we think that they're showing competence.

4:40Are there other aspects of that that might be psychological that we are looking to, as you say, demonstrate competence? Are there aspects of that that are part of our maybe even defending our own sense of self through the amount of work that we're able to accomplish or the amount that we're able to build? Yeah, certainly defending our sense of who we are, just like this sense of agency, right? Like, Hey, I can, I can do things. I'm not, I'm not a pawn in the, in the world. Um, and so that sense of agency also just, I think it's just worth reinforcing that we think of it first, you know, this is so ingrained in our psychology that we think of adding before we think of subtracting.

5:24So if we're just going along with our regular default psychology, we tend to use adding as a substitute for thinking, right? And that's really powerful. There's also economic reasons why this might be like, let's say we're working with a client, the client's basic default question is, what have you done for me today? I mean, there's this need to always be producing more, adding more, adding more value, adding more whatever, in order to keep the client, to keep people happy. What's driving that beyond just the sheer numbers? Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes the sheer numbers are driving it, and that's fine.

6:02And I think this is where you have to evaluate if it's like a real thing that adding is actually providing more value or providing what the client wants, or if there are some ways that you could provide the client value by taking away. I think it's interesting. One of the things that came out in thinking about this more and working on the book and looking at examples of where people are successful with subtracting. I mean, we talked about, hey, it's hard to show competence by taking things away. But the people who do subtract a lot show competence, right? I mean, it's a really cliche example. I didn't even use it in the book, but like Steve Jobs, Apple products.

6:44nobody's saying oh steve jobs couldn't think of additional buttons on the iphone they're saying oh look this they subtracted so much that clearly the intent was to streamline this down um and you know one of my favorite musicians is bruce springsteen he's got some albums that are like totally stripped down nobody's saying oh bruce springsteen couldn't think of words or couldn't think of notes it's like clearly he's going for a different effect here and so i think if you if what you're doing is if you determine that subtracting can provide the value that you want to provide for your client if you can subtract enough then it can then it can display competence it can show like hey we are meeting your needs here and you don't need a 20 page report from us you need the three main bullet points and the 20 page report is here if you want it but it's you know, we've stripped it down for you to provide more value.

7:38So I don't know if that's, you know, I think that takes a little bit of translation from what I said to your specific applications. But I think the general principle there is if you, if you subtract enough, it can be noticeable and it can display competence. It also might add value to the consumer too, because, you know, you think about a bloated feature set in an offering and that actually is a burden. That's not a help. No, yeah, not at all. And I think, you know, that's the reason why this message has landed so well is every and everybody's just overloaded, right? Nobody's saying, oh, I don't have enough stuff going on in my life, or I don't have enough.

8:17So I do think that there's a huge market for taking things away. On the market for, the research shows is that people default to adding, right? And we've been adding so much that there's untapped market opportunities in being able to take things away. So if you're able to use that kind of less common form of innovation, it might help you stand out. So one of the examples you give in the book that has stuck with me since the first time I read it is the example of the strategic plan at the University of Virginia. And there was the survey sent out, you know, the stakeholder survey, a lot of people that do strategic planning do versions of this where they're trying to solicit feedback from all the various stakeholders on what they would like to see changed in the coming year.

9:04And I think there was something like 750, you know, examples in this, but like, like what was it 10 % that were in favor of actually reducing something of getting rid of something? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we categorized all these, you know, well-meaning suggestions from all these different stakeholders and it's, you know, alumni, donors, students, whatever. And it was fewer than 100. I think it was like 80 or something actually recommended taking something away. And there were more than 700 that recommended adding things. And, you know, maybe every single one of those additions is good, right? Maybe they are.

9:40but if you've only got 80 recommended subtractions boy we're not thinking of something right we we we were missing opportunities to make the university a better place just in this initial key stage of like hey what are the things we're thinking about and so yeah you know that's an example we talked earlier about how do you build this into your process if you build in the strategic plan something as simple as like hey recommend one thing that you would add one thing that you would take away to make the university better, all of a sudden you've got much more, you've got twice as many ideas or a little under twice as many.

10:15Well, you talk in the book about one of the challenges on a team, and you see that right there in that stakeholder survey is that bottom up, everybody can imagine one thing that they'd like to add or more than one thing that they'd like to add. And suddenly you have a recommendation for 750 things or whatever. You can't even do, you know, however many of those. And what's missing, it seems like, is, and this is the role of the leader, the small business owner, is to impose a kind of top-down sharing of the vision that enables those requests to either make sense or not make sense in terms of the overall picture.

10:52Talk to us about how a small business owner can be more intentional about shaping the kind of feedback that they're getting and how they might use it in a business context. Well, I mean, you hit the perfect word, which was vision. I almost brought it up earlier, but I, you know, when people ask me, Hey, Lighty, should we subtract this thing or that thing? Or I don't know, but the thing that gives you clarity on what can be subtracted or not is that vision, right? So first and foremost, having a really clear vision of like, Hey, this is what our company is doing. And then you can run proposed additions and proposed subtractions through this filter of like, is this helping us get more closer to our vision?

11:30Right. And we talk about models of how things change from one state to another state. You can add force behind it, right? Or you can kind of remove forces that are working against it. So that's where if you recognize, okay, our vision is to be the number one, I don't know, car insurance provider in Memphis, Tennessee. it's like, well, then we don't have to kind of focus on this branch in another town. I mean, that's a really simple one. But you get the idea, like having that vision is incredibly important. And I think, you know, once you have the vision, there's another piece to this, which it's so important.

12:17This is these things are happening in systems, right? It's not just a one off subtraction or a one off addition. And that's, you know, I think one theoretical reason why it could be, why we might be less likely to subtract, right? Because if you've got this, I'll just say a sandwich, but you've got a sandwich and, you know, hey, let's add some bacon to it. And that, you know, adding something pretty much makes everything better. I'm a vegetarian, but whatever. Adding bacon, you know, this makes, this is, we can do that. It's not going to make the sandwich worse. It makes everything better. But if you subtract something, you can be like, okay, so maybe the strategic plan example is better.

12:56Like, hey, from my perspective, it looks like we don't need this administrator over here. But I don't have the full perspective. So it would be kind of outrageous for me to say, hey, subtract this administrator without understanding the whole system, understanding how everything works together. It actually takes more thought to be able to subtract something because you have to understand the whole system, whereas we can kind of just add, add, add incrementally and not worry so much about breaking something that might already be working. And that's where the, you know, certainly as the small business owner, they have a perspective of the whole system and they can understand, okay, these are in fact things that could be subtracted and not hurt us in unexpected ways.

13:43But also acknowledging that it's going to take more time. I mean, I talked to a speaker manufacturing company and they, you know, do very physical design stuff. And they're like, yeah, when we we know that if we, you know, remove a component from our speaker that can have benefits, you know, it makes it more reliable. It makes it less things that can break cheaper to manufacture and ship and so on and so forth. But if we're going to do that, if we're going to explore that, we actually allocate more design time for it than if we're going to add some component because they know they need to go in and analyze the whole system.

14:16if they're going to subtract something. So it's a little bit counterintuitive, right? You would think that maybe this would be easier, at least the same as adding, but in fact, it takes a little bit more thought because you have to understand the whole system. Just a little more, it's still worth it. Well, there are trade-offs, right? So if you're thinking about adding, like you mentioned, it doesn't do much damage to just add one thing or whatever. But cumulatively, that could be really destructive because you are over time, you're missing how much you've actually added. There's the maintenance to maintaining all of that, the maintenance costs of maintaining all of that.

14:57There's the opportunity cost of maybe not doing something else that your resources are now not allocated for. Talk to us a little bit, how do we think about these costs that maybe some of them are even hidden? Yeah. I mean, the opportunity cost one is so great. I heard it framed recently where it's Like if you say yes to this, you know, seemingly innocuous thing that you added to your calendar, you've effectively said no to every single other thing you could possibly be doing with that time. And and yeah, we just it's hard to think of it that way, even though it's 100 percent correct. So so, yeah, I don't mean I think adding can be mentally easier when you're adding to a system, but it does totally gunk up a system.

15:40And if you look at, you know, if one of the best ways to keep a system working efficiently and working well is by removing parts that aren't contributing as much as other parts, right? It's fewer things that can break, whether it's a part of a speaker or whether it's, you know, an employee relationship. So, you know, kind of stripping things away is a great way to make something work better. You know, one example you give in the book, which I have personal experience with because I have small children and have had many of them at this point, but is the balance bike. and that idea that you're going to actually get a better product out of taking off the pedals of a bike does not seem intuitive, but a designer has a look at this product and says, instead of adding training wheels, I can actually just remove the pedals.

16:36I can teach balance to a child that's considerably younger actually than a child that's on a typical bike. And on top of that, I've created a new and in fact superior product. That's an eye-opening example to me because there's probably, you know, I don't know, 22 opportunities in any small business where removing something would actually make the product superior. Yeah. And, you know, kind of the story actually maps back to what we were talking about before with just like kind of queuing yourself to think of subtraction because Ryan McFarland, he's the founder of Strider Bikes. And when he recounts this, he was initially just thinking about ways to lightweight the bike.

17:15He's like, okay, these are things that we could take off. And he, you know, and he was just basically going through a thought exercise of taking things away. But then when you took away the, the drivetrain, effectively the pedals and the chain, he realized that the kid could ride the bike. And then it wasn't just the lighter product. Like you said, it was a superior product. Also. I mean, it's, it goes back to this, Hey, when everybody's adding, it pays to subtract, right? Because, you know, all this bike innovation over the years like fatter tubes fatter tires and the balance bikes we didn't get to ride them when we were kids this is a relatively new innovation and it uh it it was because of subtraction and because nobody else had thought of it

18:15Focus on differentiation for a minute. One of the things that enables a small business owner to compete more effectively is differentiation, is creating distinction. Is there any sort of strategic way of thinking about this that can help us come up with more distinct products through subtraction? Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think it gets back to that vision thing, right? It's like if you don't have a clear vision, you also don't have a clear message about what distinguishes you. So that's, you know, and that clear vision comes by subtracting really cool stuff that you could be doing, but it doesn't contribute to your clear vision.

18:52So having that focus, I also I mean, I don't have a small business of the kind that most of your listeners do. But in terms of like my writing business and getting that stuff out there, it's like there's so you realize that there's so many people doing things in the world that you don't need to carve out a massive scope to be able to be effective and do what you want to do. right and so you know having that okay this is what i do this is what i do well this is what i do better than anybody else this is what i want to be doing in the future and being you know having the courage to kind of strip that down i think when you look out i at least that in my experience i was like well are people are really going to be interested in this you know kind of just my single perspective or the thing that I have.

19:47And I mean, there turns out there are tons of people who are interested in the thing if you do a good job with it. So looking over projects, products, maybe even possibly people in an organization, what are some ways business owners can identify what to stop doing, like things that they could eliminate? Certainly things not, like we said, not contributing to the vision. Um, I think that, uh, I, I look at this and then I think we talked about queuing subtraction and now, now that you've, they've listened to this podcast, they've got, okay, we're going to think about subtraction now. Um, I would think about it across three categories basically.

20:28And this is, these are the categories we looked at in our research and that we've been talking about, but basically ideas, you know, so, and objects and relationships, right? So an example of an idea would be, hey, we're the company that does X, or this mindset is really important for our company. And, you know, I talked to some tech companies and asked about ideas that people would subtract. And some of the people said ego, right? If we subtracted ego, we would potentially be a better company. So, but not that that's the thing that needs to be subtracted in all cases, or even in that case, but are you thinking about ideas that could be subtracted.

21:08Another idea is kind of just the way we've always done things, right? And then the relationships that gets to, you know, kind of reporting structures, tasks and social things that have happened, you know, meetings are an easy one. I've never talked to any group that says, hey, we should have what we really need is more meetings. Everybody recognizes the need to get rid of them. Nobody says they're at currently the optimal level, right? Everyone's already overstuffed. Exactly. Yeah. So the only way to get away from overstuffed is not, yeah, we got to say no to meetings, but you've also got to look at the ones that you have and decide which ones to take away.

21:50And then, you know, then physical things, whether it's the products that you're selling or your office space. I mean, I think the pandemic, not in the way that we would have wanted to experience it, but it did show us kind of, hey, which physical spaces do we need? Which ones don't we need? Which ones would make our life better not to drive between? So thinking about it across those three categories would, I think, reveal subtractions for people. You know, one thing, just as a closing observation on my end, that kind of ties some of these things together is your observation about the system nature of things.

22:28And when you think about pulling out meetings, it's easy to just imagine like one-off cutting a meeting or two, but your real win is going to be if you can rethink the meeting system that your organization has and then optimize to that, whether that's pulling out or whatever. Tell us more about just how to think about our worlds, about our businesses, whatever, in terms of a system. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, the meeting example we can run with here. And so you're exactly right. Just, you know, kind of one off subtractions isn't going to do much or is it going to require a lot of kind of mental energy to rethink all of them.

23:03But there's examples of companies that have done what they call a meeting doomsday. It's just, hey, all the meetings gone. And, you know, we can start adding them back. But instead of one by one considering which ones we should subtract, we're now one by one considering which ones we should add. And you fundamentally changed the baseline there, right? You started instead of starting with 100 % meetings, you started at zero and you work from the way up. And, you know, and it gives you totally different outcomes. The meeting, the companies that have done this, you know, saved, I think it was at least 11 hours per employee per month.

23:38I mean, so absurd amounts of productivity gains. And so that's an example of changing the system. a less drastic than the meeting doomsday is just using like a rule of halves. So just say, hey, could we go from weekly meetings to biweekly meetings, right? And then maybe try doing them half the amount of time with half the number of employees. And, you know, so again, it's moving you towards subtraction. It's also because you're building it into the system. It's kind of helping with that competence thing, right? Because if you've got a new employee to your company, it's hard for them to come and say, hey, we should get rid of this meeting, right?

24:15They want to show that they're a good citizen of the company and not questioning things. But if you say, hey, our job is to cut the meetings in half, then they're showing that they're doing their job by subtracting something. That's awesome. Leidy Klotz, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Joel. It's my pleasure. Thank you.

25:03experience it for yourself, go to businessaccelerator.com slash coach. That's it. We'll be back next time with more conversations to help you accelerate your business.