What Can We Stop Doing? The Turnaround Question That Works

Written by: David Carneal – Digital Efficiency Consulting Group – DECG

Read Time: 3 min

The question that saved LEGO (and can save your sanity)

Knudstorp didn’t start LEGO’s turnaround with a brainstorm. He started with subtraction: what can we stop doing?

That question works because it forces tradeoffs. And tradeoffs are the grown-up version of strategy.

If your operation feels stuck, it’s often because it’s carrying too much ‘legacy luggage.’

Why ‘stop doing’ is harder than ‘start doing’

Stopping triggers emotions: fear, sunk costs, politics, someone’s pet project, and the classic: ‘we’ve always done it this way.’

But if you can’t stop anything, you’re not managing work. Work is managing you.

What to stop first (so you actually feel it)

Stopping work is easiest when you pick the low-drama targets. You’re looking for effort that doesn’t change outcomes.

Start with recurring things. One-off chaos is annoying. Recurring chaos is a mortgage.

Here are three high-leverage categories that almost always have ‘stoppable’ items hiding inside.

Steal this 30-minute Stop-Doing Huddle

No PowerPoint. No debate club. Just decisions.

• Minute 0–5: Inventory
  • List the top 10 recurring activities stealing time (reports, meetings, rework, approvals).
• Minute 5–15: Vote
  • Each person picks 2 items that are high effort, low value.
  • Combine duplicates, then pick the top 3 to attack.
• Minute 15–25: Decide the fate
  • For each of the top 3, choose one:
    • Stop it entirely
    • Reduce frequency (weekly → monthly)
    • Automate/simplify (template, rule, or system change)
    • Delegate with a clear ‘definition of done’
• Minute 25–30: Lock it
  • Assign an owner
  • Set a date
  • Write the change in plain English and share it

After you stop something, protect the space you created

Stopping work creates a vacuum. Vacuums are where random requests go to breed.

So when you stop a report or cut a meeting, decide what the freed time is for: training, cleanup, preventive maintenance, or finishing the work you keep starting.

If you don’t protect the space, the calendar will refill. The calendar always refills. It’s basically a liquid.

Stop Targets

• High-leverage ‘stop’ targets:
  • Reports nobody reads (or that get skimmed for one number)
  • Meetings that exist because a process is unclear
  • Approvals that exist because trust is low or rules are missing

Rules

• Rules to keep it from becoming a therapy session:
  • No defending your own activity
  • If it’s not used, it gets killed
  • If it’s used ‘sometimes,’ it gets standardized
  • If it’s used ‘all the time,’ it gets simplified

Protect

• Ways to protect the time you free up:
  • Block 30 minutes weekly for system cleanup (templates, rules, master data)
  • Create a ‘request intake’ rule: new work must replace old work
  • Publish a simple priority list so people stop guessing

You don’t need a grand transformation to feel relief. You need a few crisp decisions.

Make stopping normal. Make focus visible. The rest gets easier.

The best part: once people see you actually stop things, they’ll bring you better problems to solve.

CTA: Run the 30-minute Stop-Doing Huddle this week. Save the calendar. Save the humans.

Footnotes

1. The Strategy Institute (2025) – From Bankruptcy to Billions: Lego’s Blueprint for Business Transformation
2. The Guardian (2017) – How Lego clicked: the super brand that reinvented itself