I must confess something, because it’s the only honest way to start this conversation.
For a good stretch of my career, I was the problem I am about to describe. I was the leader who walked into a room full of people already stretched thin and added one more thing, convinced I was helping my organization grow and thrive. I wanted to be the kind of leader known for making things happen. My VPs used to call me the “purple pen”, a nickname that emerged as I encouraged and signed off on the numerous priorities that came our way. It took me far too long to understand that I was not expanding what my teams could do. I was draining them.
I have been thinking about this a great deal lately, because over the past several months I've been asking leaders a simple question. What is your greatest challenge as you look ahead this year? I expected to hear about AI, economic uncertainty, and the talent market. And while those things did come up, one response kept repeatedly came up. It’s one you’re likely familiar with: leaders are drowning in priorities. These days it’s like every conversation adds another urgent initiative, every meeting introduces another pressure point, and every strategic discussion seems to end with something added to the list rather than something thoughtfully taken off it.
The Hidden Cost of Every “Yes”
What I am watching unfold in organizations everywhere is not a productivity crisis. It's a prioritization crisis. It’s not that leaders don’t understand the value of focus. It’s just that adding is way easier than subtracting. Experience, accreditations and education hasn’t prepared leaders, myself once included, to better prioritize priorities.
Here is the truth I wish someone had shared with me back in my purple pen days. Every priority you add places a real and largely invisible tax on your organization. It draws down attention, emotional energy, and decision-making capacity. When a leadership team adds a fourth, fifth, and sixth priority without removing anything, they are not expanding but diluting energy.
So what can leaders do to help tame these growing priorities? Try these three practices to ease the stress as you head into the lazy, hazy days of summer:
Tool One: Use Strategy as the Kill Switch
While it’s true that strategy drives priorities, too few leaders use it as a way to stop priorities from piling up. A clear strategy is your legitimate cover for removing everything that does not serve its objectives. A courageous leader is comfortable saying “That's an interesting idea but it's off strategy”.
The next time an initiative lands on your desk, whether it arrives as a competitor's move, a board member's idea, a client concern, or an unexpected opportunity, run it through this question before you mobilize anyone: “Does this directly advance one of our stated strategic priorities?” Sometimes the answer is yes, and you move immediately. And sometimes the answer is simply no. The key is having the discipline to say no. Use your strategy as the kill switch rather than your rejection having to do with any one person's idea.
Tool Two: Empower Priority Conversations
When was the last time your team had a conversation specifically about priorities rather than progress? Most team meetings focus on updates, deadlines, and performance metrics. We review what has been completed, identify what is behind schedule, and move on. Yet few leaders create space to discuss whether the priorities themselves still make sense.
Set aside time for a dedicated priority conversation. Give your team advance notice and ask them to reflect on three questions:
• How are our current priorities affecting our ability to do our best work?
• What obstacles, competing demands, or hidden pressures are slowing us down?
• What work should we stop, defer, simplify, or let go of altogether?
The value of this discussion goes far beyond workload management. It creates a safe environment for people to speak honestly about competing demands, resource constraints, and the growing tension that occurs when everything is treated as urgent. Left unaddressed, that tension often leads to frustration, exhaustion, and declining team performance.
As leaders, we're comfortable introducing new priorities. We are far less disciplined about retiring old ones. In your next team meeting, clearly articulate the handful of priorities that matter most. Then ask an equally important question: What no longer requires our attention? Be explicit about what can be paused, what can be delegated, and what "good enough" looks like for work that no longer requires excellence.
Many leaders hope lower-priority initiatives will fade away on their own. They rarely do. They continue to consume attention, meetings, energy, and mental bandwidth.
One of the most powerful leadership acts is declaring the end of a priority. When leaders do this openly, they give people permission to redirect their focus toward what matters most. In a world where attention has become one of our scarcest resources, that permission may be one of the most energizing gifts you can offer.
Tool Three: Make the Trade-Off Conversation Safe
The most human expression of subtraction happens one person at a time, in the conversations leaders are often most afraid to have. Too many employees are quietly carrying more than they can sustain because they are afraid that saying "I'm overloaded" will make them look incapable, resistant, or weak. Many workplace cultures still unconsciously reward overextension, which means the people struggling most are often the ones least likely to admit they are.
Before your next meeting, test the validity of priorities by asking "If this moves up, what can move down?" When you ask that question it helps transform workload from a test of endurance into a conversation about choices. Before you add anything to someone's plate, ask them what would have to come off it to make room for something else. Engage with their answer rather than treating it as resistance. Just as importantly, model this with your own peers, because overload almost never begins at the bottom of an organization. It cascades downward from leaders who have not yet learned to subtract at their own level.
What Subtraction Makes Possible
The organizations that thrive over the next decade will not be the ones doing the most. They will be the ones disciplined enough to know what matters most and courageous enough to align their energy accordingly, which in the end means finding the nerve to remove what does not.
I learned this later than I would have liked, and I learned it the hard way, watching good people wear down under priorities I kept adding to. But here is what I know now. When leaders find the courage to subtract, something remarkable happens. People regain clarity, and with clarity they regain confidence. With confidence organizations regain the momentum that endless addition has slowly drained away. Subtraction is not the opposite of ambition. It is ambition that has finally grown wise enough to succeed.
Want to test your organization's prowess in priority priorization? Drop me a line and I’ll you our Priority Rationalization Index™ to help you evaluate not only what’s important, but what truly deserves the organization's focused energy right now.
Here's a question I would gently leave you with this week, the same one I eventually had to ask myself.
What are you willing to stop doing, so that the things that truly matter can finally have all of you?