Bill CanadyCEO & Founder, The 80/20 Institute · Be a Great CEO: Learn how to Fix it, Grow it, & Sell it.

25 Initiatives vs 1 Goal: The Success SECRET They Didn't Expect! #shorts

16 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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0:43

In this YouTube short, Bill Canady contrasts two planning outcomes for similarly sized companies with comparable sponsors and operators. The first scenario details a planning process that produced 25 initiatives, each documented in a polished deck with owners and dates. After nine months, progress was modest—nine initiatives were about 40% complete, four were finished but had no impact, and the company's EBITDA remained essentially unchanged, buried in noise. The second, implied scenario (though not fully described in the excerpt) focuses on a single key number or goal rather than a multitude of initiatives. The contrast highlights that a singular, well‑defined metric can drive more meaningful performance improvements than a sprawling list of initiatives.

Chapters

Now, let me tell you the other version because I've seen it in a great deal more often than I've seen the first one. Same size company, same kind of sponsor, same caliber of operator. He came out of his planning process of 25 initiatives, 25 gorgeous deck, every function represented, an owner and a date on every line. 9 months later, that's right. You guessed it. Nothing. It's not a disaster, nothing. 9 of them were about 40% done, 4 were finished and didn't matter, and the EBITDA line was inside the noise of where it started. Same market, same year, roughly the same people. The difference was 1 number versus 25.