Adding things is tough.
If you look at your business, adding customers, employees, products, marketing, and systems all require a significant series of investments. And once you’ve added the thing, the return is inconsistent. Even if you’re scrupulous in your execution, you rarely get home-runs. Mostly, you get a mixture of base-hits and strikeouts. It often takes months and years to see your new addition bear fruit.
Subtracting things, on the other hand, is much easier. It’s typically quick, simple, and has an immediate and positive effects. You cut a bad-fit employee and profit jumps up, you fire a bad-fit customer and life gets easier, you kill an unproductive service and suddenly the business is more valuable.
Despite the difficulty of addition, there’s no getting around the need to add things. Your business will either hit the limit of its potential in its current incarnation or the market will change and need something new.
However, it’s important to periodically clean house. To regularly consider what you might remove and how it could make things better.
Without investigating, what’s something you could remove that provides little or no value?