Stop-Doing Review: That Frees Strategic Capacity. Strategic leaders understand the importance of prioritising their most critical tasks and initiatives. To effectively safeguard their focus and resources, they implement a practice known as a Stop-Doing Review. This disciplined ritual involves a thorough evaluation of ongoing activities and projects to identify and eliminate those that do not contribute significant value to the organisation’s strategic objectives.
By consciously deciding to stop lower-value work, leaders can clear distractions and free up valuable resources, including time, attention, budget, and talent. This newfound capacity is essential for fostering innovation and enabling breakthrough initiatives to gain the momentum needed for success. Ultimately, the Stop-Doing Review not only streamlines efforts but also cultivates a culture of strategic alignment, ensuring the organisation stays focused on its most important priorities.
The Importance of Stop-Doing Reviews
In the fast-paced world of operations, the need to execute quickly often overshadows critical strategic initiatives. Organisations frequently find themselves bogged down by a myriad of ongoing projects, some of which may have outlived their relevance or effectiveness. These initiatives can become “zombie” projects—activities that continue to consume valuable resources and attention yet fail to deliver significant returns or strategic value.
To combat this pervasive issue, implementing a systematic approach, such as an annual or quarterly Stop-Doing Review, can be invaluable. This structured review process encourages teams to step back and assess their current project portfolio. It compels decision-makers to thoroughly evaluate which initiatives truly contribute to the organisation’s goals and which should be discontinued. By making these deliberate exit decisions, teams can clear the clutter from their portfolios and focus on what truly matters.
The benefits of conducting Stop-Doing Reviews are twofold. Firstly, by discontinuing less impactful projects, organisations can free up capacity and resources. This reduction in operational drag lets teams redirect effort to high-leverage work, which can drive greater innovation and stronger outcomes. When teams can focus on strategic initiatives, they can scale their efforts in ways that drive meaningful growth and success.
Secondly, these reviews foster a cultural shift within the organisation that encourages intelligent restraint. Emphasising the need to stop good-but-not-great work sends a clear message that the organisation values strategic focus and excellence over sheer activity volume. By promoting a mindset that prioritises quality and impact, leaders can empower teams to make tough decisions that ultimately drive the pursuit of truly great work.
In summary, Stop-Doing Reviews are not merely a tactical exercise; they represent a crucial component of strategic management that enables organisations to maintain agility and continue evolving in a dynamic environment. By consciously deciding what to stop, leaders can create the space necessary to innovate and thrive.
The Process: Annual or Quarterly Exit Reviews
To keep our projects aligned with our strategic goals and operating rhythms, we will conduct exit reviews on a consistent schedule. These reviews will occur annually for comprehensive strategy resets, where we assess our long-term vision and goals, and quarterly for more tactical operating-rhythm assessments focused on the ongoing effectiveness of our current initiatives.
We encourage participants to treat these reviews as capital-allocation meetings rather than mere status updates. This mindset shift emphasises the importance of making informed decisions about resource allocation and prioritisation of efforts based on actual performance data.
Preparation Phase
Before each review session, each project owner must prepare and submit a one-page document called a “Stop-Doing Memo.” This memo should include detailed information on the project’s performance metrics, associated costs, and its strategic fit within the broader organisational objectives. The template for the Stop-Doing Memo will be shared in advance to guide project owners in providing relevant and concise information.
Review Process
During the review meeting, leadership will evaluate the entire project portfolio against explicit criteria. These criteria may include performance indicators, alignment with strategic priorities, resource utilisation, and potential for future growth. Based on this comprehensive assessment, leadership will make go/kill/pause decisions regarding each project. This decision-making process is critical to ensuring our resources focus on high-value initiatives that drive success.
Reallocation of Resources
After the review concludes, we must act swiftly. Within 48 hours, we must reallocate personnel and budget from stopped projects to the new priorities identified during the review. This urgency helps prevent halted projects from being backfilled with low-value tasks, ensuring our team’s time and talent are directed toward initiatives that promise greater returns and align with our strategic direction.
By adhering to this structured approach, we aim to foster a culture of accountability and agility, enabling us to respond effectively to changing circumstances and capitalise on new opportunities as they arise.
Decision Criteria to Navigate Complexity
To make informed, objective decisions, evaluate projects through four distinct lenses. This approach helps minimise emotional biases and political motivations in decision-making.
- Strategic Fit: Evaluate whether the project aligns with your organisation’s current strategic objectives and priorities. Ask yourself: Does this initiative directly contribute to advancing our overarching strategy? If strategy has recently shifted and this project remains unchanged, consider discontinuing it. A project that no longer supports the organisation’s strategic direction can divert resources from more aligned efforts.
- Learning Rate: Assess the project’s ability to generate valuable insights or build skills and capabilities. Is the work producing useful data or knowledge at a satisfactory pace? Monitor learning momentum; if it has plateaued, it often indicates diminishing returns. Projects that aren’t yielding new findings or improving capabilities can drain resources without providing significant benefits.
- Opportunity Cost: Consider what potential, higher-value initiatives are being hindered because this project consumes valuable resources—such as talent, budget, or leadership focus. By making the trade-offs explicit, you clarify the cost of continuing with the current project. Identify and prioritise work that can deliver greater impact or align more closely with strategic objectives, ensuring your resources go to the most promising areas.
- Maintenance Burden: Evaluate the ongoing effort required to sustain the project, including necessary activities like meetings, fixes, reporting, and coordination. High maintenance demands with limited upside potential may signal a project that is no longer worth pursuing. If the effort to keep the project afloat outweighs its benefits, it could strongly indicate that you should terminate or reposition it.
To support decision-making, score each project on these criteria using a simple red, amber, or green system. This scoring not only highlights which projects are performing well but also surfaces clear candidates for exit, enabling more straightforward and efficient decision-making.
The Ritual: Celebrating Intelligent Kills
Make Stopping Work Visible and Respected: Create a culture where the decision to halt a project is not seen as a sign of failure, but as a strategic choice. This can be achieved by publicly recognising and celebrating “intelligent kills,” which are decisions made based on careful analysis and strategic foresight. By normalising this practice, we can reduce the stigma around stopping projects and encourage teams to engage in honest, open assessments of their work’s viability and potential for success.
Name the Win: When a project is concluded early, clearly articulate what was achieved during its lifecycle and why discontinuing the effort is the best course of action. This includes highlighting any successes, lessons learned, or valuable insights gained. By framing the decision positively, we reinforce that the outcome, regardless of the project’s completion, contributes to the organisation’s overarching goals.
Reallocate Fast: To maintain momentum and focus on priority initiatives, reallocate resources swiftly. Within 48 hours of deciding to stop a project, teams should reassign personnel and adjust budgets to support more critical initiatives. Quick reallocation minimises the risk of scope creep, where teams might extend or introduce low-value work to fill the void left by the halted project, ultimately hindering progress on more valuable endeavours.
Document the Rationale: Transparent documentation of the decision-making process is vital for organisational learning. By publishing the rationale for stopping a project, we create a record others can refer to in the future, helping them recognise patterns in project evaluations and decisions. This practice ensures that the organisation learns from its experiences and reduces the likelihood of resurrecting projects that are not aligned with strategic objectives or that have previously been deemed unfeasible. This reflective approach fosters a more agile and informed working environment.
One-Page Stop-Doing Memo Template
Utilise this streamlined, decision-oriented memo format instead of traditional slides. This approach improves clarity, aligns stakeholders, and speeds up approval for project-related decisions.
Summary (3–4 sentences)
Begin with a clear and concise statement of your recommendation regarding the project—whether to kill, pause, or continue it. Include the name of the project and outline the expected impact of the decision on the organisation and its objectives.
Context: Provide a brief overview of the initiative, including its original goals, the intended outcomes, and the current status. Limit this section to agreed-upon facts to avoid confusion and maintain focus on the issues at hand.
Recommendation: Clearly articulate what action you suggest be taken (kill or pause the project), specify the timeline for this decision, and outline the implications for the project and the team. Include the next steps, ensuring clarity on how to proceed.
Rationale: Present three to four evidence-based reasons backing your recommendation. This should include an assessment based on key criteria such as strategic fit with overall business goals, the organisation’s learning rate from the initiative, opportunity costs of continuing the project, and the burden of ongoing maintenance the project entails.
Rejected Alternatives: Discuss the alternative options considered before arriving at your recommendation—for example, “reduce scope” or “extend timeline”. Explain why these alternatives were deemed less favourable and why they do not serve the organisation’s best interests at this time.
Next Steps: Outline specific, time-bound actions to take assuming approval of your recommendation. For example, mention tasks like reassigning resources (e.g., “reassign two engineers to Project X by Friday”) or completing any required contractual obligations (e.g., “close vendor contract by September 30”). This provides a clear roadmap for execution following the decision.
Attachment: Include minimal data, such as a chart or table, only if it supports and enhances your case without overwhelming the narrative. Keep the entire memo concise and contained to ensure it fits on one page.
Call to Action: Identify one specific project that no longer aligns with the established criteria and propose it for termination or a pause. Draft a comprehensive one-page memo with robust data and a definitive decision, share it with your leadership team, and publish the rationale internally for transparent communication. Then, within 48 hours, reallocate the freed capacity to the organisation’s top-priority breakthrough work to maximise impact and efficiency.
This Post is 9/20. Monday’s post will be: Cross-Functional Squads: From Silos to Speed
