Every planning cycle adds priorities. Almost none removes anything. The result is an organization carrying several years of half-finished commitments, with this year’s vital few competing for the same people. A stop-doing list makes subtraction part of the plan.
In this guide
Key Takeaways
- →Treat the stop-doing list as an output of planning with the same standing as the X-matrix, and lock it with the plan.
- →Last year’s reflection is the richest source: lost bets still being worked on, in some form.
- →Every stop needs an owner and a date. Stopping is work, and a stop without an owner is a slow fade.
- →Assign the freed capacity to a named priority, or something else absorbs it.
- →Stopping isn’t failing. Ending a lost bet is the plan working.
- →Projects linked to no objective are the easiest candidates to find, and only if the tool can show them.
Plans only grow
Watch a few planning cycles and a pattern emerges. New priorities are added each year. Old ones are rarely ended; they fade from the matrix but not from people’s calendars. Projects continue because nobody formally stopped them. Reports keep being produced for meetings that no longer need them.
The people who will deliver next year’s priorities are the same people carrying all of that. A plan that adds without subtracting is a plan that has been staffed on paper only.
If the plan doesn’t say what stops, the answer is nothing, and the new priorities will be delivered with whatever time is left over.
Make it a formal output
Treat the stop-doing list as an output of the planning cycle with the same standing as the X-matrix. It is produced on day two of the planning offsite, after priorities are chosen and before the capacity check, and it is locked with the plan.
Each item on the list records what stops, who owns stopping it, by when, and what capacity it frees and for which priority.
Where to find candidates
| Source | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Last year’s reflection | Priorities with a “lost” verdict that are still being worked on in some form |
| Last year’s matrix | Priorities that dropped off the matrix but whose teams are still active |
| The project portfolio | Projects with no link to any annual objective |
| Recurring meetings and reports | Anything produced for an audience that no longer acts on it |
| Below-the-line candidates | Proposals that missed the cut and would otherwise start informally anyway |
The reflection is the richest source, because it names work the evidence says isn’t paying off.
Row 1 depends on having run the reflection properly, with a verdict on every primary correlation. Row 5 comes out of choosing the vital few, where the proposals below the cut line are decided one by one.
Rules that make stopping stick
- Every new priority names what it displaces. If its team is fully committed, something they do now must end or move.
- Every stop has an owner and a date. Stopping is work. Somebody has to close it down, tell stakeholders and release the people.
- Stops are announced. The people affected hear it from leadership, with the reason, not from a quiet absence on the matrix.
- Freed capacity is assigned. The hours released go to a named priority, or they’ll be absorbed by something else.
The second rule is the one most often missed. A stop without an owner becomes a slow fade, and a slow fade releases no capacity at all.
Handling resistance
Stopping things is uncomfortable, especially when the work belongs to someone in the room. Three framings help.
- Stopping isn’t failing. A priority with a “lost” verdict was a reasonable bet that didn’t pay off. Ending it is the plan working, not a judgment on the team.
- Defer rather than kill, where there’s a genuine case for later. Record it with a date to reconsider.
- Show the trade. “Ending this frees the people we need for that” is easier to accept than “ending this” on its own.
A worked example: a stop-doing list
| Stop | Owner | By | Capacity freed | Reassigned to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy dealer-service scheme | Head of service | 31 March | 4 person-months | Service network |
| Monthly regional performance pack (replaced by live matrix) | Strategy lead | 31 January | About 30 hours a month | Review preparation removed |
| Supplier portal pilot (lost bet last year) | Procurement lead | 28 February | 3 person-months | Low-carbon steel agreements |
| Two overlapping cost-reduction workstreams | CFO | 31 January | 2 person-months | Pricing discipline |
| Quarterly customer survey duplicating NPS | Customer lead | 31 March | 1 person-month | Technician certification |
Illustrative.
Every row names where the capacity goes. That’s what turns the list from a gesture into a resourcing decision. It also makes the conversation easier for the people affected: they hear what their work is being traded for, not just that it’s ending.
What the list needs from the software
Look again at row 2 of the candidate table, and at the second row of the worked example. Both describe the same problem: work that is still consuming people although it left the plan. That is not something a planning room can recall accurately in November. It is a query, and it needs a system that knows what is linked to the plan and what isn’t.
The third candidate row is the clearest case. “Projects with no link to any annual objective” is a one-click answer where hoshin and the project portfolio sit on the same platform, and a multi-week audit where they don’t.
| What the list needs | What the tool has to do | How to test it in a demo |
|---|---|---|
| Lost bets still running | Keep last year’s verdicts beside what is active today | Show me a lost priority whose team still has open work |
| Orphaned work | List projects and goals with no link to an objective | Filter for everything that serves nothing |
| Capacity freed | Effort figures attached to the work being stopped | Show me what this project is consuming now |
| An owner and a date per stop | A stop as a tracked item, not a line in a deck | Create a stop with an owner and a due date |
| Deferred, not killed | A reconsider date that resurfaces next cycle | Defer something and show me when it comes back |
| Stops locked with the plan | The list travels with the matrix into the year | Lock the plan and show me the stop list afterwards |
Row 4 is the fix for the rule most often missed.
Row 4 is worth pressing on during an evaluation. A stop recorded in a slide is the same as no stop; the owner has nothing in their queue, no date arrives, and the fade begins. A stop recorded as a tracked item with an owner and a due date behaves like any other commitment, which is exactly the standing this article argues it should have.
What never stopping costs
The cost of an absent stop-doing list is already in the payroll. Take the worked example at face value: ten person-months and thirty hours a month, carried by people who are also named against next year’s priorities. That is roughly one full-time person, spent every year on work that nobody would fund if it were proposed fresh.
Against that figure, license models are a smaller question, though not an irrelevant one. OnStrategy lists $200 per month for unlimited users. i-nexus publishes a free Starter tier for up to five users and $28 per user per month at its Standard tier. The candidate table needs visibility into projects and recurring work across the organization, which argues against a model that charges for every person whose work you want to see.
Profit.co publishes two plans, Essentials and Enterprise, quoting against modules and scale rather than a public seat rate. What matters here is that hoshin kanri, OKRs and Goals, Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Roadmap sit together in Essentials, with project portfolios on the same platform. That is what makes candidate row 3 a filter instead of an audit: team goals and projects that link to no objective on the matrix can simply be listed. What drives the cost of hoshin kanri software sets out the rest of what to total.
The 30-day free trial is long enough to load last year’s matrix and current projects and produce a first candidate list, which is usually longer than anyone in the room expects.
Stop-doing in Profit.co
In Profit.co, last year’s objectives keep their check-in history and outcome-lag position, which gives the reflection the evidence for stop candidates. Because hoshin kanri runs alongside project portfolios and OKRs on one platform, projects and team goals that link to no objective on the matrix are easier to find. More on the planning software page.
Against the four rules, that means rule 1 has somewhere to record the trade, since a priority and the work it displaces are both rows that can point at each other. Rule 4 has somewhere to land the freed capacity, because the receiving priority is a row with an owner rather than a name on a flipchart. And the list locks with the matrix, so it arrives in January as commitments rather than as good intentions from an October room.
Free Product Demo
Find what your plan should stop
A 30-minute walkthrough, tailored to your team.
Book a free demo
What happens in the call
How your teams set goals, track progress and review results.
Strategy, performance, projects and engagement on one platform, with AI.
A practical path to align teams, execute faster and drive results.
Questions this article answers
A list produced during planning of work that will end to make room for new priorities, with an owner, a date and the capacity each stop frees.
Priorities with a lost verdict in last year’s reflection, work from old priorities that never formally ended, projects linked to no objective, reports nobody acts on, and proposals that missed the cut.
Usually because no one owns the stop. Without an owner and a date, the work fades slowly and its people are never actually released.
On day two of the planning offsite, after priorities are chosen and before the capacity check. It is then locked with the plan, like the X-matrix.
It makes the candidates findable: lost verdicts beside work still running, projects and goals that link to no objective, and the effort each one consumes. It also holds each stop as a tracked item with an owner and a date.
No. Keep it visible with its reason and, where it was deferred, a date to reconsider. Work that disappears without a record tends to be re-proposed next year with a new name.
