Strategy is built by subtraction
We tend to think strategy is about adding.
A new positioning.
A new logo.
A new campaign.
A new product.
A new beginning.
Sometimes it is.
But over the last ten months, I’ve learned that the hardest strategic decisions are usually about removing.
A few days ago I cancelled a Wi-Fi subscription.
The contract was for an appartment I no longer live in. I had simply been paying the bill for the last ten months.
A small operational task.
Until it wasn’t.
The moment I cancelled it, I realised I had just removed one of the last invisible connections to a chapter of my life that had already ended.
It made me think about how we approach transformation in business.
Hotels announce a repositioning while keeping the same service culture.
Brands launch a new visual identity while speaking to the same audience in the same way.
Companies write a new strategy while rewarding exactly the same behaviours.
Everything looks different.
Very little has actually changed.
Strategy is architecture.
Architecture is made of decisions.
Some decisions add.
The important ones usually remove.
Over the last few weeks I’ve changed apartments, reduced my fixed costs, paid down part of my mortgage, rewritten my financial rules and started thinking much more intentionally about how I want to spend my time.
Individually, none of those decisions changes my life.
Together, they create a completely different operating system.
The same applies to brands.
Every brand has invisible dependencies.
An outdated approval process.
A customer segment that no longer fits.
A legacy product.
An internal belief everyone accepts but nobody questions.
They rarely appear in a brand book.
They determine whether strategy succeeds.
Every transformation I’ve been involved in has eventually reached the same point.
The question stopped being:
“What should we create next?”
It became:
“What are we still maintaining that belongs to a previous version of this business?”
I think the same question applies to people.
The most meaningful changes in my life haven’t come from finding a new version of myself.
They’ve come from removing the habits, routines and systems that no longer belonged to the person I wanted to become.
Maybe strategy has never been about adding more.
Maybe it’s about carrying less.
Yamil Errasti / Founder
And yes, this was probably written faster than it should have been with the help of ChatGPT.
