3 questions before Q4
Hi Everyone,
At the beginning of every quarter, teams spend time deciding what to start. Much less attention is given to what should continue.
As a result, meetings, reports, working groups, and long-running initiatives often roll into the next quarter automatically. They often continue because nobody has stopped to question them.
Today, we're sharing a simple quarter-end audit that reverses that default.
Instead of assuming everything continues, ask each owner to make the case for anything they want to carry into the next quarter.
What this looks like in practice
When Carla Vernón became CEO of The Honest Company in early 2023, she inherited a product portfolio that had grown broader than the company could effectively support.
Within a few months, she removed roughly a quarter of the products.
The result wasn't a decline in growth. Revenue began growing again.
She later told Fast Company:
"People think that's risky, but our company grew revenues for the first time in two years when we had less variety in our portfolio, because we could focus on what mattered."
The same principle applies inside your organization.
Every meeting, report, and initiative consumes attention. Keeping too many of them alive spreads time and energy across work that may no longer matter.
How to run a carry-over audit
Apply the audit to recurring work across the company, including standing meetings, weekly reports, working groups, and initiatives that have continued beyond their original purpose.
Give each owner one week to answer three questions:
1. What decision or output does this produce?
The answer should identify something specific. If the only purpose is "awareness," "visibility," or "alignment," consider whether the same result could be achieved through a written update.
2. What changed last quarter because of it?
Ask for a concrete decision, action, or output. The fact that a meeting took place, a report was completed, or a group remained active isn't evidence that it created value.
3. What would we lose if we stopped it for 90 days?
This question reveals whether the work is genuinely essential or simply familiar. If the owner can't explain the likely consequence of pausing it, the risk of stopping may be lower than everyone assumes.
Anything without clear answers should be paused for the next quarter. That doesn't mean it is canceled forever. The owner can propose bringing it back later, supported by a stronger case.
What to watch for
Three predictable problems tend to appear the first time you run this audit.
Owners defend the effort rather than the outcome
"We spend three hours a week on this" isn't a reason to continue. In fact, the greater the effort involved, the stronger the case for examining what it actually produces.
Ask what changed because those three hours were spent.
History is treated as justification
You will hear some version of: "We've always done it this way."
But a meeting that began 18 months ago and has continued every week since is exactly the kind of activity this audit is designed to surface.
A long history explains why something exists. It doesn't prove that it should continue.
Paused work quietly returns
Unless you record what was paused and why, old meetings and reports will gradually reappear.
A recurring meeting may return to the calendar. Someone may restart an old report because another person asks for it. Within weeks, the work is back without ever being formally reconsidered.
Keep a shared list of everything that has been paused, along with the reason and the date it can be reviewed again. At the next quarter-end, revisit the list before anything is restarted.
Try this before your next quarter-end
Begin with one category of work. Standing meetings are usually the easiest place to start.
Send the following message to every meeting owner:
"Before we roll our meetings into Q4, I'd like each owner to send one paragraph answering three questions: What decision or output does the meeting produce? What changed this quarter because of it? And what would we lose if we paused it for 90 days? Anything without clear answers will be paused for Q4 and reviewed again at the end of the year."
Once you have audited the meeting calendar, apply the same process to recurring reports in Q4 and long-running initiatives in Q1.
The goal isn't to eliminate everything. It is to make sure that work continues because it still earns its place – not simply because it existed last quarter.
Go deeper
👉 Fast Company: The pivot playbook: How product cuts saved Honest Company and Aloha — read this if you want the full Carla Vernón story and a second turnaround at ALOHA that used the same discipline.
👉 Nature: People systematically overlook subtractive changes — use this if you want the underlying research on why adding is our first instinct and subtracting rarely comes to mind.
👉 Jim Collins: How Do You Do "Stop Doing?" — read this before your next leadership offsite if you want a shared exercise for the whole team on what to stop.
Coming up on Monday
On Monday, we will cover the four documents that decide whether a co-founder exit is a clean handover or a legal fight.
Have a good weekend!
P.S. There's a quick survey about ExecEdge Pro that helps us decide what to include. You can answer it here, and we'll send you a free month of Pro once we're live.