I’ve known some geniuses who were such a pain to work with that we had to let them go; then again, some of our most brilliant, delightful, and effective people were let go by previous employers for being none of those things. It would be nice if there were some magic bullet that turned difficult people into success stories, but there isn’t. There are just too many unknowns and immeasurable personal characteristics involved for us to pretend that we have figured out how to do that. Everyone says they want to hire excellent people, but in truth we don’t really know, at first, who will rise up to make a difference. I believe in putting in place a framework for finding potential, then nurturing talent and excellence, believing that many will rise, while knowing that not all will.

Systematic sloughing off of the old is the one and only way to force the new. There is no lack of ideas in any organization I know. “Creativity” is not our problem. But few organizations ever get going on their own good ideas. Everybody is much too busy on the tasks of yesterday. Putting all programs and activities regularly on trial for their lives and getting rid of those that cannot prove their productivity work wonders in stimulating creativity even in the most hidebound bureaucracy.

As chapter 5 shows, the Million Hours Campaign led by Pushkala Subramanian at pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca succeeded because it blended the two approaches to free up employees’ time. Top-down changes included adding steps before employees could “reply all” to more than twenty-five email recipients—users had to pause, read a warning, and do an extra click. That little speed bump saved employees from thousands of unnecessary emails.

To help people apply this lesson, we’ve run the Subtraction Game with at least a hundred organizations, including: the top eight executives at Bloom Energy;100 credit union executives; 150 Netflix film postproduction employees; 300 partners in a big law firm; 400 Microsoft executives; and 60 Stanford staffers at a “Help Center” workshop. We ask people to start with solo brainstorming, to “think about how your organization operates. What adds needless frustration? What scatters your attention? What was once useful, but is now in the way?” For some organizations, we add, “Identify impediments that are within your sphere of influence and that are systemic at your company.” Next, people meet in small groups or online rooms for ten minutes or so, discuss the impediments each member generated, and brainstorm more potential subtraction targets. Then, to focus their attention, they select a couple of targets and outline rough implementation plans—who would lead the charge to eliminate these obstacles, whose support they would need along the way, and which people and teams might push back against the change.

Systematic sloughing off of the old is the one and only way to force the new. There is no lack of ideas in any organization I know. “Creativity” is not our problem. But few organizations ever get going on their own good ideas. Everybody is much too busy on the tasks of yesterday. Putting all programs and activities regularly on trial for their lives and getting rid of those that cannot prove their productivity work wonders in stimulating creativity even in the most hidebound bureaucracy.