Less, but Better - The Cost of Organizational Clutter
Less but Better Week 3
By Rick Aman on“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker
One of the easiest things for an organization to do is to add something. A new initiative is launched, a committee is formed, or a priority is added to the strategic plan. Usually, each decision makes sense at the time. Someone identifies a need or an opportunity, and the organization responds. The problem is that organizations are generally much better at adding than subtracting.
Over time, that accumulation begins to matter. Programs, strategic initiatives, and expectations all compete for the same finite resources. Eventually, an organization can reach the point where its commitments exceed its practical capacity to execute them well. That is what I think of as organizational clutter.
Last week, I wrote about the difficult distinction between a good program and the right program for the future. This week, I want to broaden that conversation. The issue is not simply whether an individual program or activity has value. The larger question is what happens when too many worthwhile things compete for the same organizational capacity. My guiding question for this week is: What is consuming capacity without producing enough mission value? Less, but Better LinkedIn Series.
The Four Costs of Organizational Clutter
During my years as a college president, I rarely encountered a shortage of good ideas. In fact, the opposite was usually true. There were always more worthwhile things we could do than we had the capacity to do well. The harder leadership task was determining which ideas deserved our limited resources and, just as importantly, recognizing when existing commitments were consuming resources that might be more valuable somewhere else. Organizational clutter rarely results from one obviously bad decision. It usually accumulates through many reasonable decisions made over time. Collectively, however, they consume four resources that every organization has in limited supply: time, money, employee capacity, and leadership attention.
Time may be the easiest to underestimate. A two-hour meeting involving ten people is not really a two-hour commitment; it represents twenty hours of organizational capacity. Money is easier to see, but even there I think leaders sometimes ask whether something fits within the budget rather than whether it remains the best use of those dollars. Employee capacity is harder to quantify. People can absorb only so many priorities, initiatives, and additional responsibilities before their attention becomes fragmented and execution begins to suffer.
Leadership attention may be the least visible cost of all. I have come to believe that the focused attention of a CEO and executive team is one of an organization's most valuable resources. Leaders have limited capacity to think deeply about the future while simultaneously managing dozens of priorities and recurring demands. Every hour spent maintaining something of marginal value is an hour unavailable for something potentially more important.
That is why I see organizational clutter as more than an efficiency problem. It is a stewardship issue. Every organizational commitment consumes capacity, and capacity committed in one place is unavailable somewhere else.
When Everything Is Important
I have reviewed many strategic plans containing ten, fifteen, or even twenty priorities. They are often filled with worthwhile ideas, but at some point they stop being priorities and become lists. A priority, by definition, requires choice. This is one of the reasons I prefer organizations to identify a relatively small number of key priorities. When leadership tells employees that everything is important, people are left to determine for themselves what actually deserves their attention. Resources spread across too many objectives, accountability becomes less clear, and execution becomes uneven. The organization may be very busy while making surprisingly little progress on the things that matter most.
Strategic plans can unintentionally contribute to this problem. Instead of forcing choices, the planning process sometimes becomes a way to accommodate everyone's interests. Another objective is added because a department believes its work needs to be represented. Another initiative is included because a constituency considers it important. Eventually, the plan describes almost everything the organization does rather than identifying the few things it must do particularly well.
Boards and CEOs have an important responsibility here. Leadership is not simply about determining what else an organization should pursue. It is also about protecting the organization from pursuing too much. I think one of the more useful questions a governing board can periodically ask management is not, “What else should we be doing?” but rather, “Are we trying to do too much?”
If everything is important, nothing is truly prioritized. Focus requires choices, and choices inevitably mean that some worthwhile projects will receive less attention so that the most important priorities can receive more. That is the central idea behind this Less, but Better LinkedIn series.
The Real Cost Is Opportunity Cost
The four costs of clutter are significant, but I believe there is an even more important cost: opportunity cost. It is relatively easy to calculate what a program, meeting, or initiative costs. It is much harder to see what the organization is unable to do because those resources are already committed.
That changes the leadership conversation. Instead of simply asking, “What does this activity cost us?” I would ask, “What are we unable to accomplish because we continue doing it?”
A program producing modest results may still be a good program, but what if those same resources could produce substantially greater mission impact somewhere else? A recurring management meeting may be useful, but what if reducing its frequency created meaningful time for leaders to work on a critical strategic initiative? A long-standing report may provide useful information, but what if technology now allows the same information to be produced with a fraction of the employee time?
This is why I do not view organizational focus primarily as cost cutting. The objective is not simply to spend less or do less. The objective is to create capacity for what matters more.
I think that distinction is important. Cost cutting begins with the question, “Where can we save?” Strategic subtraction begins with a different question: “Where could these resources create greater mission value?” That moves the discussion away from defending individual activities and toward comparing the relative value of competing uses of organizational capacity.
Capacity Is a Strategic Asset
Perhaps we should think about organizational capacity much as we think about financial resources. We would not knowingly leave substantial financial resources invested indefinitely without periodically examining the return. Yet organizations routinely allow time, money, employee energy, and leadership attention to remain committed without asking whether the value being produced still justifies the investment.
I would encourage boards and executive teams to periodically examine major commitments through four questions: Does this still meaningfully advance our mission? Can we demonstrate meaningful outcomes or value? Is the capacity being consumed proportional to the value being produced? Could this capacity create greater mission value somewhere else?
Those questions do not automatically tell us what to stop, nor should they. Decisions involving programs, employees, client expectations, and institutional commitments require judgment. But good questions create clarity, and I continue to believe that clarity precedes progress.
Time, people, leadership attention, and organizational focus are finite assets. The leadership question is simple: What is consuming capacity without producing enough mission value? Recognizing the cost of clutter is the first step. Next week, we move to the harder question: What should we stop doing?
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At Aman and Associates, I work with governing boards, CEOs, and executive teams to strengthen organizational focus and align resources with mission and impact. Through board retreats, CEO mentoring, strategic conversations, and a focused two-hour Zoom Futuring session, I help leaders identify where organizational capacity is being consumed and whether those commitments still produce sufficient mission value. The goal is not simply to do less, but to create the time, talent, funding, and leadership attention needed for what matters most. Capacity is a strategic asset, and protecting it is one of the most important forms of stewardship a leadership team can provide.
Rick Aman, PhD, Aman & Associates - rick@rickaman.com | rickaman.com