The Courage to Change Course
Think about the decisions you make: to enter a new market, to launch a new product, to embark on an unproven strategy, to hire a staff member, or to let one go. All of these decisions have consequences. However, some of the most important decisions you’ll ever make are the ones to stop doing something.
The Stop Doing List is an idea introduced to the world by Peter Drucker (He called it “Planned Abandonment”) and popularized by Jim Collins. The idea is both simple and complex at the same time…
The simple part – Stop doing the activities that add little or no value or those activities requiring time and energy that could be redeployed to more value-added activities.
The complex part – Trying to decide what to stop doing, overcoming the emotional attachment to current work and mustering the courage to make the call.
How do you decide what to stop doing? Here are four questions that may help:
Sometimes this is a hard question to answer. However, my assumption is the work we do, and the activities of our organizations, should add value. If there is no value, why would we do it? What you may discover is that as the world changes, what once added value may add less today than in the past. Regardless, the first step is to assess CURRENT value. At this point, you can have a more thoughtful conversation about value-adding alternatives.
What are alternative uses for the time and resources?
This is the fun part of the process. Let’s say you are evaluating something you do that requires four hours a week of your time. Make a list of alternate uses for those four hours. Let your imagination run wild. On a macro level, what could your organization do with the dollars and people currently assigned to a major project if it were discontinued?
What are you afraid will happen if you stop the current work?
This question concerning our fear is not intended to surface our own frailty as much as it is to help us see reality more clearly. Confronting our fears is rarely fun but often profitable. One popular fear associated with stopping work is the reaction from others. My experience is when we discontinue activities we perceive to have little value or impact, many will actually agree with our decision. Many times our fears are unfounded and the risk of stopping a program or activity is minimal.
What are the likely benefits, tangible and emotional, for stopping the work?
The answer to this question requires judgment on the part of the leader. You know as well as I do, the future is a tenuous place. There are no guarantees our actions will have the desired effect. This lack of certainty cannot discourage or dissuade us. Leaders are paid to see the unseen. What benefits do you believe you will accrue if you stop doing the work in question? Do your homework, look at the data, seek counsel from trusted advisors and then trust your gut.
There are no great leaders without great courage. A Stop Doing List is an outstanding tool to strengthen our courage and our leadership.
“There are no great leaders without great courage.” Mark Miller

Meet The Author, Mark Miller
Mark Miller’s passion is serving leaders. He has traveled to dozens of countries around the world in an effort to fulfill his calling. Whether speaking to global audiences or individual leaders, his message is consistent and pragmatic: Lead Every Day.
His career at Chick-fil-A began over 40 years ago as an hourly team member in one of the local
restaurants. Shortly after that, he became Chick-fil-A’s 16th corporate employee. Since that day, he
has worked all across the business but recently retired as the Vice President of High-Performance
Leadership, where he was a principal architect in building Chick-fil-A’s renowned high-performance
leadership culture
For the last twenty-five years, he focused much of his time on helping the organization grow its
leadership capacity. Mark and his team at Chick-fil-A invested a quarter century and tens of millions
of dollars searching for and validating ideas that work. Over the years, they focused on numerous
topics, including High-Performance Teams, High-Performance Organizations, Employee Engagement, Execution, Personal Leadership Effectiveness, and, most recently, Culture. These projects have each culminated in globally acclaimed books. Today, over one million copies of Mark’s books are available in 25+ translations, including national bestsellers and a Wall Street Journal Bestseller. His approach to writing and speaking has always been to find what is true in principle and apply it to the real world. Because of this, Mark is best known for his ability to unlock the full potential of executives and teams to create High-Performance leaders and organizations.
When not practicing or studying leadership, Mark is an avid photographer. His expeditions have taken him to some of the world’s most difficult-to-reach destinations. He has photographed silverback gorillas in the jungles of Rwanda, the icebergs of Antarctica, the Maasai warriors in East Africa, Nepalese culture at Everest Base Camp, and much more. More adventures are in the works.
Mark is married to Donna, his high school sweetheart. They recently celebrated their 40th wedding
anniversary. Mark and Donna have two sons, Justin and David. Justin is married to Lindsey and they have three children: Addie, Logan and Finn. If you are a follower of Mark on social media, you will likely see them make a debut on his Instagram feed.
Learn more about Mark: LeadEveryDay.com