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

11 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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0:43

In this YouTube short, Bill Canady contrasts two similarly sized companies with comparable sponsors and operators. The first company follows a planning process that produces 25 initiatives, each documented with a deck, owner, and deadline. After nine months, only nine initiatives are about 40% complete, four are finished but irrelevant, and the company's EBITDA remains essentially unchanged, indicating that the multitude of initiatives generated noise rather than results. The second company, though not detailed in this excerpt, is implied to have pursued a single, focused goal, leading to a more significant impact on performance. The monologue underscores the principle that concentrating on one clear objective yields better outcomes than spreading effort across many fragmented 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.