In the corporate world, we are addicted to Addition.

When a problem occurs, our instinct is to add something.

• We add a new checkpoint.
• We add a new form.
• We add a new approval signature.

Over time, our Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) become bloated monsters. They grow from 10 pages to 50 pages. We pat ourselves on the back, thinking that “More Pages = More Safety.”

We are wrong.

In a crisis, complexity is not a safety net; it is a tripwire. Every extra step is a chance for confusion, delay, and failure.

True resilience doesn’t come from adding more; it comes from Via Negativa—improvement by subtraction. It is time to stop rewarding the people who write the procedures and start rewarding the people who delete them.

The Psychology: Why We Hoard Steps

Why do our manuals get so fat?

It is a mix of Octalysis Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance) and Justification.

1. CYA (Cover Your Assets): We leave outdated steps in “just in case” an auditor asks for them. We are terrified of deleting a rule and then being blamed if something goes wrong.
2. Illusion of Competence: A 100-page report looks like you did more work than a 2-page checklist. We confuse volume with value.

But in operations, value is speed and accuracy. A 50-step recovery plan that takes 2 hours to read is useless if the plant blows up in 30 minutes.

The Science: Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law states that the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.

If your BCP gives an operator 5 different “If/Then” scenarios for a power outage, they will freeze. This is “Analysis Paralysis.”

If you delete 4 of those scenarios and leave only the one that works 90% of the time, they act immediately.

Resilience is about velocity. The fewer steps you have, the faster you move.

How to Gamify “The Delete Key”

You need to reverse the incentives. Usually, we punish people for cutting corners. You need to distinguish between “Cutting Corners” (unsafe) and “Cutting Bloat” (efficient).

Here is how to create a culture of subtraction:

1. The “10% Diet” Challenge

Issue a challenge to every department: Cut 10% of the word count from your recovery procedures without losing technical accuracy.

• If a sentence says: ” The operator must ensure that they physically locomote to the valve…”
• Change it to: “GO to the valve.”
  You just saved time and cognitive load. Reward the team that shreds the most weight.

2. Kill the “Zombie Approvals”

Look at your approval trees.

Does the “Assistant Manager of Logistics” really need to sign off on a warehouse evacuation? Or is that just legacy bureaucracy?

The Rule: If a person adds no value to the decision, delete them from the loop.

Reward the employee who identifies a bottleneck and removes it.

3. The “Red Pen” Award

Make it prestigious to simplify.

Create a “Red Pen Award” for the employee who turns a complex 5-page procedure into a 1-page visual aid.

Publicly celebrate the removal of work. Show that you value their time more than you value the document’s thickness.

Conclusion: Perfection is Not “Nothing More to Add”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously said:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Your BCP is likely full of “just in case” clutter.

It has steps that refer to old machines. It has warnings that are common sense. It has approvals that slow you down.

Be brave. Hit the delete key.

Your binder will get lighter, but your resilience will get stronger.

Next Step:

Open your BCP. Find the longest paragraph in the document.

Read it. Ask yourself: “Does this help the operator turn the wrench?”

If not, delete it.

If yes, rewrite it in half the words.

Do it now.

The information in this article was partially generated by Google’s Gemini, an AI language model, and has been reviewed/edited for accuracy and relevance.