The Power of “Not Now”
Try the most under-utilized levers for innovation: subtraction.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When my oldest son learned to ride his bike, he mastered it in one joyful hour instead of the weeks it took me as a child. Ryan McFarland's invention of the Strider Balance bike is what helped him learn so quickly.
The balance bike succeeded through subtraction. Instead of adding training wheels, they removed the pedals which helped children develop balance at a much younger age - around 3 in my son's case. By the time he tried a pedal bike at 5, he was so far up the learning curve that the next step felt incremental.
It's a lesson in one of the most under-utilized levers for innovation: subtraction.
A balance bike without pants: Don't try this at home
Fighting the Addition Bias
We have a cognitive bias toward adding rather than subtracting. Psychologists call this "addition bias" — our tendency to believe that action through addition is more valuable than action through removal. In organizations, this shows up as teams piling on new initiatives, new processes, new tools, rather than questioning what they should stop doing.
Of course, removing pedals from a bike is different from removing tactics from your launch plan. But the principle remains the same: sometimes the path to mastery requires taking things away, not adding them on.
Even with AI promising to make us more efficient, I see teams using extra capacity to learn these tools while taking on more work to prove their value. This leads to them sacrificing space to think, innovate, or simply be. The real opportunity lies in subtraction.
This Isn't Easy (And That's The Point)
There's real emotional weight tied to proving our value through "doing more." It's baked into how we measure success under capitalism. We've been conditioned to equate busyness with importance and activity with achievement. Saying no sometimes feels like giving up or not trying hard enough.
But like any muscle, the more you flex your subtraction skills, the stronger they get. The first "no" is the hardest. Once you see that nothing breaks, the next no is that much easier.
How to Practice Organizational Subtraction
Make opportunity cost explicit, and quantify it. Before green lighting any new initiative, force the conversation: "If we say yes to this, what are we saying no to?" Then go further: build some discipline around assessing how many hours of work the new initiative will cost the organization. Calculate not just direct involvement, but the meetings, reports, check-ins, and coordination that will spin up as a result.
End every 1:1 with the subtraction question. "What should we stop doing?" Make this as routine as asking about progress on current projects.
Create a "not now" list. Instead of killing good ideas entirely, park them in a visible "not now" list. This acknowledges their value while protecting current priorities. Just like kids need to master balance before adding pedals, teams need to master their current initiatives before layering on new ones. Saying "not yet" can be easier than saying no altogether.
Reward strategic "no." Recognize and celebrate leaders who decline to take on new projects in service of excellence on existing ones. Make saying "no" to protect team capacity as valued as saying "yes" to new opportunities. When someone pushes back on an additional ask because their plate is full, treat it as good judgment, not resistance.
The balance bike worked because removing pedals forced children like mine to master balance before worrying about propulsion. What could your team stop doing—or stop doing right now—to master what really matters?
Explore More
If this topic interests you, I highly recommend the new podcast Change Signal by Michael Bungay Staniard. His episode with Leidi Klotz, the author of the book Subtract, was inspiration for this article.
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