When we think about growing, we think about adding. It’s intuitive because the result of growth is more capacity or capability to do something. However, the path to growth often includes subtraction.
For example:
- If you remove service offerings you can increase perceived relevance to a subset of customers that you become more efficient at serving at a higher profit.
- Firing a customer that is expensive to service frees up existing resources to deliver value to more customers.
- If you have an employee in a role that you don’t need, letting them go can free up cash to hire someone in a role that you do need.