A series of conversations are rippling through the work world right now that are likely to feel familiar to you. How do we return to the office? is one. To what extent do we continue to support if not expand efforts in diversity and inclusion?Where, and to what degree, should we embrace the reality around productivity laid bare by the pandemic that some people work better remotely, others in person, and huge majority that say they want a mix of both? In most organizations prevailing response is to explore what can be added to how we do what we do in order to improve, advance, and grow. But what if success in an uncertain world requires exactly the opposite view? What if it's about what we subtract?

Last spring, researchers at the University of Virginia published a study in the science journal Nature about our typical response as humans to any questions around improvement or advancement. Nature isn't a news source often read by organizational executives, though perhaps it should be.The title of the scientific paper alone should be a head turner for leaders: People systematically overlook subtractive changes. For business leaders, the translation is this: When we want to problem solve, innovate, or grow, we tend to focus on what we can add or at least swap evenly for than on what we can get rid of. Yet bigger is not always better. And more means more to manage, get confused by, or even expose ourselves to greater risk through. At the very least, we ought to weigh those downsides of growth more than we tend to do in our enthusiasm to just add to solve.

The researchers found that this question of 'add vs. subtract' should be more than just a passing curiosity. While they acknowledge that the idea of taking away something isn't unfamiliar, and is even sometimes touted in our language ("less is more"), when it comes down to our actual actions the science makes clear that we humans are not in the habit of considering taking something away, even if we are made aware that doing so would our flexibility, resilience, and innovation. When asked how people might improve their writing, as one example of the kinds of experiments the researchers tested, a mere 17% of subjects offered edits that took away words. The overwhelming majority added prose. In a different test, an incoming new leader of an organization sought ideas for improvement in the way things were done. The researchers tracked the suggestions. Just 11% of the ideas involved getting rid of something - a step, a process, a way, anything. Even when an experiment made it explicitly clear that subtracting was an option, and in some cases one with better payoff, subjects' first inclination was to add something new instead. 

Why do we most often downplay the value of subtracting? The study suggested that to some degree it's a simple matter of what we practice doing, or in this case failing to practice asking how taking away might improve things. Indeed, when they pursued this question by giving participants repeated chances to practice solving the same problem, the researchers found that eventually people did get around to ideas that suggested that less might in fact result in more of what was truly being sought. But absent the directive, or indeed even the space to solve in more than one way, the default was to look for ways to add. That proves problematic, especially in an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex, or ambiguous. Emphasizing the point, the research clearly showed that the more uncertain their surroundings or greater their load of tasks, the more likely subjects were to default to ideas that added on. And that adding on included adding more complexity, which often leads to more uncertainty and volatility.