Working for a growing private equity fund, the mindset was all about expansion and doing more. Yet, most scaling teams are one redundant process away from burning out your top performers or blocking your next hire.  
 
I recommend a different approach – remove work, support growth, everyone wins. 
 
Say what!? I said what I said.  
 
When I took on a Director of Operations role, I heard things like: 
 
“We just know what we have to do for that client.”  
“We email the file back and forth with the vendor.” 
 
Let’s be clear, “remembering what clients want” and using email as a workflow will drag down your top performers and a breeding ground for mistakes as your company grows. Teams are forced to spend time remembering low value information. We were on the verge of significant growth; it was subtraction time. A few Power Automate workflows and a centralized file share later, we had breathing room and didn’t need to hire. 
 
I have seen time and again where an entire process was put into place because of one client, or a team was burned after one random issue. Suddenly six steps were added, two additional approvals were needed, and no one ever reviewed the process again. If your compliance fix added three steps, you didn’t fix it, you punished everyone else. 
 
It’s your job to challenge the chaos:  
Explicitly give permission for teams to pause and rethink workflows. If you haven’t given your team permission to kill work, they’re not going to ask. 
Delay or cancel one project this quarter. See #1 above on how to use this time. 
Reward step-killing ideas, even the unsexy ones. 
Have the teams estimate and then track the time saved after the changes are made. 
 
If you need a kickstart, try asking for one process from each team and score them: 
🔴 Red – Outdated workflow that is still done out of habit  
🟠 Yellow – Work that exists for one client or scenario 
🟢 Green – Manual workflow that could benefit from automation 
 
Case in point, one of the first projects I ever led was a cost-savings initiative. We encouraged employees across the firm to submit ideas, big and small. Hundreds of ideas were submitted. We labeled them as: 
 
* “Project” 
* “Need More Research” 
* “Just Do It” 
 
The bulk of those “Just Do It” ideas were the time savers. They were answers to “why are we still doing work this way?” It was a firm-wide project, but I recommend starting small. A few quick wins will build momentum, not anxiety. 
 
💡💡You can use my Work Subtraction Audit to help find the ideas with solid potential. Send me a message and I will give you access for free! (no additional spam included.) 💡💡 
 
Great COOs are part editor, part assassin. Be the one who supports deletion of steps, not adds them.  
 
Keep turning that chaos into progress, 
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