When your best teachers are edging out the door from sheer exhaustion, the solution isn’t another initiative. Instead, it’s asking which one to stop. Teacher burnout is now alarmingly high, and mounting pressures such as parent demands, the unknowns of AI, and worsening classroom behaviour pile on.

Schools are fraying not because they lack ideas, but because they rarely subtract them.

Yet schools are addicted to addition. New programs, projects, and committees often masquerade as proof of innovation. A new challenge emerges? Bolt something on. Another parent request? Create a task force.

The problem is that few ever ask: what can we let go? Leaders must become surgical here. Subtraction is not a weakness. It is the most strategic move available.

This is where clutter creeps in. Each extra initiative adds reporting, meetings, and expectations. Soon, the calendar looks impressive, but the outcomes don’t. The community feels busier, but not better.

The bravest quadrant

Mauborgne and Kim’s Four Actions Framework says leaders should reduce, raise, create, and eliminate. The first three feel ambitious, but elimination? That feels scandalous. Who wants to be the leader that cancels something beloved—or worse, something sacred by tradition? We understand the emotional attachment to these activities, but we must also recognise that only elimination delivers true clarity. It’s not retreat. It’s advance. It’s cutting the fog, so the pathway is visible again.

The siren-song of adding co-curricular activities is a case in point. They sound attractive, look good in glossy brochures, and please particular parents or staff. However, many programs run at a high cost and risk for very few students. Leaders often know these programs are unsustainable yet hesitate to end them for fear of upsetting the loud teacher championing the cause or the helicopter parent insisting on a bespoke opportunity. The result? Another branch weighed down, while the rest of the tree strains for light.

But get your leadership team in a room to discuss what needs to be eliminated, and the political anxiety will render them speechless. Reverse the task and ask them to add something, and you can’t shut them up. This is the paradox that keeps schools ridiculously busy places.

The pruning principle

Dr Simon Breakspear calls this pruning: cutting back branches not to damage the tree, but to release its vitality. Schools too often look like overgrown hedges—every branch competing for sunlight, none flourishing. Pruning is leadership. It’s the courage to say this branch goes so that branch can thrive. Space created is not empty—it’s oxygen. It's a breath of fresh air, a release from the suffocating overgrowth, and a step towards a more vibrant and healthy school environment.

Breakspear also reminds us that pruning begins at the personal level. Leaders cannot expect systemic change if they themselves are overloaded and unwilling to reduce. Before a school can prune its programs, leaders must prune their own calendars, habits, and commitments. This is the uncomfortable mirror: are you modelling the capacity to let go? Until leaders learn to eliminate in their own practice, systemic pruning will always remain talk, not transformation.

When activities overstay their welcome

So how do you know what needs pruning?

• Time-heavy, impact-light: Activities that swallow hours with minimal tangible outcomes. Think of the committee that meets monthly, generates a ten-page minute trail, and changes absolutely nothing. I’m sure I’ve caught you laughing at this, but it happens too frequently, it's almost a cliché.
• Legacy without relevance: Projects that once made sense but now struggle to get up off the mat. Picture the co-curricular club with three students and two exhausted teachers, kept alive mostly by nostalgia. You can almost count the eyerolls when it's raised in leadership meetings.
• Strategic drift: Programs that no longer align with the vision. Like an old pilot assessment tool still in circulation, despite the school’s move toward holistic learning. It’s either time to refresh your strategy or eliminate programs that don’t align with it.
• Tradition for tradition’s sake: Rituals maintained only because they always have been. That annual event that demands weeks of preparation yet fails to stir parents or students the way it once did. Think the quintessential spring fair that raises a few thousand dollars, while the staff cost is immeasurable.

Each is a candidate for elimination. Ask the piercing question: If we weren’t already doing this, would we start it today? If the answer is no, then courage is calling.

This is not a sign of weakness, but a display of strength and confidence in your leadership. You have the power to shape the future of your school by making strategic decisions about what to eliminate.

The counter-intuitive truth

Adding feels safe. Subtracting feels risky.

Addition pleases; subtraction disappoints. But here’s the paradox: elimination creates abundance. By saying no to distractions, schools say yes to depth, clarity, and sustainability. Cutting the dead weight doesn’t shrink opportunity, it actually multiplies it.

Elimination can’t be a once-a-decade purge. It must be a rhythm, a regular practice that keeps your school focused and purposeful. Each planning cycle should ask: What no longer serves our purpose? What must be pruned so the tree can breathe? Schools that practise this regularly feel lighter. Staff rediscover energy. Students see clarity. The culture shifts from busy to purposeful, and the sense of direction and meaning inspires everyone.

Questions for leaders

To begin, ask:

1. What no longer serves our students’ future?
2. What costs more energy than it creates?
3. What would we never start today if it didn’t already exist?

Conclusion

The volume of activity doesn’t define great schools, but rather the clarity of focus. Elimination is not austerity—it’s renewal. The paradox of leadership is this: less is not loss. Less is better. And sometimes, less is the bravest thing a leader can do.