Business | Bartleby

The best bosses know how to subtract work

The minus mindset may be unintuitive but it is essential

A scissor head man in a suit
Image: Ryan Gillet

Companies are used to celebrating addition. Profits, customers and share prices should go up rather than fall. Innovation is the adding of new products. Larger numbers are a measure of career success: managers climb the corporate ladder by taking on more reports, running heftier budgets and trousering bigger salaries. Genuine superstars don’t just add. They multiply. The best software programmers are tagged as “10x developers”, for supposedly being ten times more productive than their peers.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The minus mindset”

From the September 2nd 2023 edition

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