Subtractive and Additive Change

This post originally appeared in my newsletter on February 9th, 2023.

In my new role, I have to think a great deal about the impact of trying to improve (or change) something. It’s not something I take lightly. It occurred to me this week that there's a big difference between subtractive and additive change.

Subtractive change immediately removes something, and it makes people's lives easier. 

Additive change asks people to do more (based on the premise that things might improve in the future).

Subtractive change is like tearing down a wall that's in the way of creating an open floor plan. Additive change is like adding an extra room, which might improve the house, but it also means more work and adjustment.

What occurred to me recently is how infrequently companies pursue subtractive change. It's not in their repertoire.

"But that's because almost all change is additive at first because getting used to new things is hard!" you might argue.

Is that always true? Is calling a "no meeting" day additive? You've subtracted the number of meetings on people's calendars. Is trying to do less work at once additive? No. Is admitting OKRs aren't working and just STOPPING them additive? Nope—so long as you don't immediately try to replace them with something. Remove features? Subtractive (but additive for customer support, at least initially).

So subtractive change is possible, but it doesn't happen very often. Here are some thoughts as to why that is:

• We get emotionally attached to things.
• We replace things. New leaders "rip out the old stuff" but immediately replace it with their favorite frameworks (which is doubly hard). When time gets "freed up" we jump directly to "make use of it".
• We equate work with adding things, and we get rewarded for work. Subtracting stuff feels easy: "Oh, well, getting rid of stuff is trivial. You can't just take it away!" Everyone who joins the company gets tasked with adding stuff: adding processes, adding work, adding meetings.
• We assume that whatever is there is there for a good reason and that even if it is broken, it is better than nothing. Zombie process is real.
• We make something “more efficient” by subtracting “steps”. But the thing still exists. Someone needs to do it.
• The "change is always hard!" mantra. I agree with the idea to some extent, but could part of that be because sometimes we don't look for universally annoying things to focus on removing (to balance out the "hard" change)?
• Growth and "adding" are synonymous. A "grown-up company will naturally have more process!" or "To grow, we have to scale the team!" How often have you heard of companies REMOVING layers of hierarchy?

Earlier this week, I caught myself in the standard additive change trap. I started to rationalize that "this little time investment would lead to amazing things!" But I stepped back and kept my ears open. I "got out of the building" and talked to more of my partners. Turned out I wasn’t the only person thinking about adding—for other people.

I also considered two traps:

• The "1000 paper-cuts" problem involves tons of localized additive changes that ultimately create a non-linear increase in additive drag at the global level.
• The "1000 workarounds" problem involves tons of localized subtractive changes (or at least normalizing changes) that have the net effect of "pushing" additive changes to other locales, which can feed into the 1000 paper-cut problem.

Subtractive and additive is not good/bad. It's a polarity. We can grow responsibly (additive) and subtract recklessly. Growth is part pruning, part planting, and part focusing (subtractive) and making sure things grow.

With that in mind, I stepped back and took the purely subtractive view. What can we remove to make people's lives instantly easier? Where is the zombie process that people tacitly accept but no one finds valuable? What is that thing that people have tried to improve for years but defies improvement—where a fresh start might be the best way forward? How can I work with leadership to facilitate a subtractive win?

That was the change in perspective I needed.