WHAT OUR CHILDREN CAN TEACH US IN BUSINESS

Last week, we took the TV off the wall.

Not moved it to another room. Not reduced screen time. We physically took it off the wall.

And something interesting happened.

At first, the kids didn't quite know what to do with themselves. There was suddenly this space in their day that used to be automatically filled.

Then they started filling it themselves.

They played more. Read more. Went outside. Invented games. Built things. Got bored.

Figured out what to do with the boredom.

We started seeing different parts of them emerge.

And the interesting thing is, we didn't add anything to their lives.

We removed something.

I've been thinking about that a lot in business.

Most businesses are obsessed with addition.

Another system. Another meeting. Another report. Another service. Another person.

Another piece of software. Another process.

Individually, most of these things probably made sense when they were introduced.

But businesses accumulate noise.

Eventually, all those individually reasonable decisions start competing for time, attention and resources.

So I've started asking a much simpler question:

What purpose does this actually serve today?

And if the answer isn't immediately clear, maybe the next question should be:

Why are we still doing it?

The biggest lesson from taking the TV down wasn't the hours we got back.

It was what appeared in those hours.

Creativity appeared. Learning appeared. Conversation appeared. Different types of play appeared.

Things had room to happen because something else was no longer consuming the space.

I think the same thing happens in business.

Remove an unnecessary service and your proposition might become clearer.

Remove an unnecessary process and your people might move faster.

Remove an unnecessary meeting and you might give a team hundreds of hours back over a year.

Strip enough noise away and you might finally notice opportunities that were sitting there all along.

So here's a question worth asking:

If we were building this business again today, would we still choose to do this?

If the answer is no, don't keep it simply because it's familiar.

Strip it back.

And don't immediately rush to fill the space.

See what appears.

Sometimes growth doesn't come from adding the next thing.

Sometimes it comes from making room for it.