What Organizations Should Resolve to Stop Doing This Year

Sometimes progress isn’t about adding more, it’s about removing what’s getting in the way.

The start of a new year often triggers the same instinct inside organizations:

New goals.

New initiatives.

New tools.

New priorities.

But if 2025 taught us anything, it’s this:

Most organizations don’t need to add more.

They need to stop doing a few critical things that are quietly draining energy, trust, and execution.

This year, the most effective resolution for leaders may be subtraction.

Here’s what organizations should resolve to stop doing.

1.   Stop Adding Goals Without Removing Friction

Many organizations enter the new year by layering priorities on top of already full plates.

The result isn’t ambition, it’s overload.

Research shows that 71% of employees feel overwhelmed by competing priorities, and the average worker now juggles more than twice as many active goals as they did just a few years ago (Microsoft, Gartner).

When everything is necessary, nothing is clear.

Instead of asking, “What should we add this year?”

Leaders should ask, “What friction can we remove?”

Progress accelerates when focus is protected.

2. Stop Treating Urgency as a Leadership Style

Urgency has become the default tone of modern work.

Everything is “high priority.”

Everything is “time sensitive.”

Everything feels immediate.

But constant urgency doesn’t create performance; it erodes it.

Gallup data show that high-pressure environments are 2.5× more likely to lead to burnout, not because people care less, but because sustained urgency undermines judgment, recovery, and psychological safety.

Urgency should be situational, not cultural.

When pressure becomes permanent, leaders trade clarity for chaos.

3. Stop Rolling Out Tools to Fix Structural Problems

When work feels hard, the reflex is often to reach for technology.

Another platform.

Another dashboard.

Another system layered onto broken workflows.

But tools don’t fix misalignment.

Employees now switch between applications more than 1,200 times per day, and leaders lose up to 8 hours per week trying to regain context across fragmented systems (HBR, Atlassian).

Technology can reduce effort, but only when the underlying work is clear.

If the process is broken, automation accelerates the breakdown.

4. Stop Asking for Engagement Without Fixing Clarity

Many organizations continue to ask:

“How do we get people more engaged?”

But disengagement is often a symptom, not the problem.

Gallup reports that only 46% of employees clearly understand what’s expected of them, making disengagement less about motivation and more about role clarity.

People don’t disengage because they don’t care.

They disengage when the path forward is unclear.

Clarity creates energy.

Confusion consumes it.

5. Stop Treating Culture as a Side Initiative

Culture is still too often positioned as something separate from “real work.”

An initiative.

A value statement.

A quarterly focus.

But culture isn’t what sits beside strategy; it determines whether strategy moves at all.

McKinsey continues to find that nearly 70% of transformation efforts fail due to culture, not strategy or technology.

Culture is how decisions are made.

How conflict is handled.

How work actually gets done.

When leaders stop treating culture as optional, execution stops stalling.

By the Numbers: Why Subtraction Matters

·       71% of employees feel overwhelmed by competing priorities

·       1,200+ app switches per employee, per day

·       8 hours/week lost by leaders regaining context

·       2.5× higher burnout risk in high-urgency environments

·       46% of employees clearly understand expectations

·       70% of transformations fail due to culture, not strategy

Sources: Gallup, Gartner, Microsoft, HBR, McKinsey, Atlassian (2024–2025)

A Better Resolution for the Year Ahead

The most effective organizations won’t win by doing more this year.

They’ll win by:

·      Removing friction

·      Reducing noise

·      Restoring clarity

·      Designing work that people can actually move through

At Sellar Strategic Advisory, we help organizations identify where energy is being lost and redesign systems, leadership practices, and culture to make performance sustainable again.

If this year is about doing fewer things better, you’re already on the right path.

Culture by Design.