The Subtraction Problem in Modern Leadership

When an organization struggles to hit its targets, our default corporate instinct is almost always to add. We add another layer of approval, another compliance check, a new software tool, or an entirely new initiative. Over time, these well-intentioned additions accumulate like plaque in the organizational bloodstream, creating a culture of chronic friction where execution slows to a crawl.

In There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work, the focus shifts from doing more to clearing the field. The book acts as a tactical guide for leaders who realize that the secret to high performance isn’t inspiring people to work harder through the sludge, but ruthlessly eliminating the sludge itself so your talent can actually do what they were hired to do.

The Blueprint: Identifying and Eradicating Institutional "Stuff"

The book offers a systematic framework for auditing your current operational environment and identifying the invisible barriers to execution. To streamline your workplace, leaders must master three principles:

The Audit of Friction: Map out the recurring processes that cause the most frustration among your front-line employees. If a routine task requires multiple sign-offs or excessive administrative overhead, it is no longer an asset—it’s institutional waste that needs to be redesigned or deleted.
Challenging the "Legacy Trap": Just because a workflow or reporting cadence has existed for years doesn't mean it still delivers value. Leaders must foster a mindset that questions old practices, forcing every legacy process to justify its existence against current strategic goals.
Empowering the "No": True efficiency requires psychological safety. Teams must be given the explicit permission and authority to raise their hands and call out tasks, meetings, or automated workflows that get in the way of actual business outcomes.

Why It Matters for the ELE Community

For senior talent, HR, and L&D executives who are tasked with designing agile, high-performing corporate cultures, this book offers a strong operational focus:

Protecting Your L&D Investment: You can design the most impactful leadership development programs in the world, but if your leaders return to an environment choked by administrative red tape, their new skills will remain dormant. Clearing the runway is essential for training to stick.
Combating Quiet Quitting and Exhaustion: Top performers don't burn out from challenging work; they burn out from meaningless work. By leading the charge against corporate bureaucracy, HR executives can directly improve retention and give employees their energy back.
Aligning Operations with Strategy: It moves the talent function out of the realm of abstract culture-building and anchors it into pure performance architecture, proving how operational cleanup directly drives bottom-line execution.

True leadership is often measured not by what you build, but by what you dismantle. When we develop the courage to cut away the legacy processes, useless meetings, and administrative clutter that drain our teams, we finally make room for meaningful, impactful innovation to thrive. Let’s stop managing the sludge and start building a cleaner, faster path to real work.

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