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

STOP DOING THIS: The Secret to REAL Change #shorts

18 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this short advisory, Bill Canady explains the final step for achieving real organizational change: publicly announce the policies or practices you will stop doing. He argues that the natural instinct to implement changes quietly leads to confusion, exceptions, and eventual policy erosion when frontline staff are unsure of the new rules. To prevent this, he recommends making the cessation announcement loudly—both internally (in a meeting) and externally (in writing) with clear dates and responsible names. Additionally, he stresses making it costly to reverse the decision, ensuring the change sticks.

Chapters

Can't write it that way. You haven't decided anything. You've got a wish. Step 4, right? The final one. Communicate loudly what you're going to stop doing. Let people know. Make it loud. This is the opposite of what your instinct says. Your instinct is to do this quietly so no one panics. Quiet simplification does not survive contact with the first pushback because when a customer calls and yells, the person who takes the call does not know whether the policy is real, so they make an exception. And 40 exceptions later, there's no policy. Announce it internally in a room, externally in writing with dates and names, and make it expensive to reverse.