Strategy Is Subtraction (And I Learned It the Hard Way)
- Apr 7
- 2 min read
By Deepak Shukla
The boldest move I ever made in business didn’t look bold at all.
It looked like me deleting things.
A few years ago, we were “growing.” Revenue was fine. The team was flat out. We had a long list of services and an even longer list of clients. From the outside, it looked impressive.
Inside? It felt chaotic.
Every week there was some fire. A client who needed something “urgent.” A deliverable that required three teams. A new idea we’d said yes to because it sounded like an opportunity. I remember opening my laptop one Monday morning and feeling that low-level dread, not because we were failing, but because everything felt heavy.
That was the turning point.
I sat down and looked at our services properly. Not emotionally. Just practically. Which ones were high-margin? Which ones drained senior time? Which clients were aligned with where we actually wanted to go?
The answers weren’t comfortable.
So we cut nearly half our services. Just stopped offering them. We also let a handful of clients go, some profitable, some long-term. That part was harder than I expected. You tell yourself you’re being “strategic,” but when revenue dips the next month, it doesn’t feel strategic. It feels stupid.
For a short period, revenue did drop.
Then margins improved. Delivery got cleaner. Sales calls became easier because we weren’t trying to explain ten different things we did, we were explaining one thing we did very well.
The team relaxed. I relaxed.
What surprised me most wasn’t the profit increase. It was how much mental bandwidth came back. Fewer decisions. Fewer exceptions. Fewer “can we just…” conversations.
That’s when I realised something I wish I’d understood earlier: growth isn’t addition. It’s elimination.
Now when I look at a new opportunity, I don’t ask, “Will this make us more money?” My question is, “Will this make the business simpler or will it make it more complicated?”
The more and more I put into something and it does not improve, it is probably a bad sign. When everything is constantly reactive, it is probably not aligned. The best strategic decisions I have ever made did not add complexity; they reduced complexity.
There is a huge difference between being busy and being effective. I have been both. Busy feels productive at the moment. Strategic feels uncomfortable at first because it often means saying no.
Most of our real wins came from doing less, but doing it properly.
Cutting didn’t shrink the business.
It clarified it.
And clarity compounds.
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