Today we present to you The Subtractor. A Superhero born out of adversity.
He was a nobody. Actually he was a novice project manager who took on more than he could chew.
He was assigned to a strategic project called “ADD”. It stood for Action Drives Delivery. The name itself has been an outcome of a 4 hour workshop.
It started like any other project but soon everyone kept adding mini projects to it. Weekly 10 min stand up became 1 hour sit down. The action tracker which started with a list of 20 lines was now past 100 lines.
He slowly started losing it. The team used to jokingly call themselves ADDicts, but he started looking like one! He thought he could manage all of it. If he just had one more alignment meeting, if he could have just one more brainstorming but the end never came.
Then one day out of the blue, he was given an additional project. This was called MULTI - Multiple Plays. Now he was up to his neck in deep water. There was no time to rest, none to think and none to reflect.
The final nail in the coffin was when he got allocated the third strategic project - EXPO - Exponential Potential. Something snapped in him that day.
People remember seeing him go inside the project room. The walls now had no space for any new projects, charts, actions. He was seen mumbling to himself for 3 days in a row. And then it happened! He started tearing things down. The first to go were action boards. Then he started cancelling one meeting after the other. The action tracker was slashed to 10%. He emerged a new man when he got out of the room.
He told them to call him - The Subtractor
At first people did not notice his superpowers but slowly and surely they surfaced.
List Eraser
He could look at any list - strategic or operational and cut it down to the bare bones. He is relentless in his pursuit for paring lists down. One look from his eyes and the list starts cutting itself down automatically.
Meeting Slayer
He hates full calendars. He is always looking at freeing up time. He is the first one to excuse himself out of a meeting, if he feels he does not add value! A click of his fingers and meetings start disappearing.
Feature Killer
He loves to make products simpler. Instead of adding features, he is always looking to remove those that do not add value. Those that add to costs. That make the product more complex.
It’s very easy. Pick a department and give a person in the team the mask of a Subtractor.
Ask them to play his role and Subtract
- At least 2 common meetings per week
- At least 2 action items per projects
- At least 3 projects overall (could also be product features)
The above numbers are an indicator and should be adjusted based on your organization. The subtraction application could also be different based on context.
Define rules for subtraction - things not moving, value add low, not linked to strategy etc.
Do not stop after just one. Choose a new department every month.
When everyone else has been chosen, the business leader or CEO needs to don the role of the Subtractor.
Run this process every year. It is a constant effort.
He is not the superhero we want but the one we desperately need. The modern data epidemic is only going to make things worse.
Access to more information is making people try to act on every data point, take on more tasks than they can deliver.
The Subtractor is here to help. If only you summon!
I hope you had fun reading this. The expression here is to Subtract and was inspired by one of the comments in our notes. See you all next week. Till then, subtract!
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