Additive Bias: Why I'm Spending So Much Time Helping CEOs Do Less

Read Time: 5 minutes.

Hey friends, it’s been a minute.

October was perfect storm in the best way possible. We ran our highest rated MGMT Fundamentals and MGMT Accelerator cohorts ever. We also had 3 private workshops. I took on 2 new CEO coaching clients. We’re even running an experiment to help a partner build AI skills for their company. And I wasn’t going to miss a soccer game or a theatre performance.

Something had to give and unfortunately, it was this newsletter. But we’re back. I’ve got a backlog of ideas and some new experiments in the pipeline for 2027. If there’s a topic you’d love our take on, hit reply and let me know. Free coaching!

Now let’s understand why we can’t help but default to adding.

There’s a saying I love:

“Don't complain about having a lot on your plate when your goal was to eat.”

Sometimes the success we dreamed of shows up in a volume we can’t fully absorb. I see this with many of the CEOs I coach. They’re not complaining, but they are overloaded. And often, their self-perception hasn’t fully caught up with their current reality.

They’re still in founder mode, doing whatever is necessary to survive. Their company needs a CEO, one that makes hard calls to scale their success.

And their hardest call? What to stop doing.

Here’s the thing: It’s not their fault. We all do it. It’s a cognitive bias we all fight.

It’s called Additive Bias.

A 2021 study at the University of Virginia revealed a fundamental glitch in human problem-solving: our brains naturally default to adding new elements rather than subtracting existing ones. In the experiment, participants were asked to stabilize a Lego structure where a single, unstable block supported a roof.

They were given a clear choice:

Most of participants chose the costlier, additive option. 60%!

When the experiment was rerun with more open-ended prompts to “modify or improve the structure,” the number of participants who chose to add jumped to 90%.

We are wired to add even when the optimal, obvious move is to subtract. And it only gets worse when the move isn’t obvious. It’s no wonder so many CEOs are overwhelmed.

Here are 2 ways I work with them to change it.

Nothing teaches you how to lead better than being a parent. This week was no exception.

My daughter is taking her first investment class. She was frustrated prepping for her test. “All the math I’ve taken so far has a correct answer. You follow the rules and get it right or wrong.”

With investing, the game changes. The right answer always starts with, “It depends.”

Managing a team with multiple responsibilities is more akin to investing than algebra. You pick the game. You create the rules. In short, you decide what your team is optimizing for — that’s your investment “North Star.”

In practical terms, teams have many ways to pursue that North Star:

If your portfolio is underperforming (i.e., it’s not making progress in your target direction fast enough), there are only two solutions:

Now you can redirect your newly found focus and time toward doing more of what’s working. Or use the space to experiment and find your next winner.

If we’ve got the right priorities and we still don’t have enough time, chances are we have the wrong people.

I’m not trying to sound heartless. I’m asking you to be clear-eyed. You’re trying to optimize your team for impact while everything — EVERYTHING — is changing around you.

With all this change, what are the odds that every person on your team is the right person in the right seat right now? The odds are very low, even for our best people.

So chances are, you’ve outgrown someone. Or the business season has changed, and they’re not interested in adapting. Or the game changed around you, and the team that got you promoted isn’t the team that will help you compete at this level.

But here’s the thing: if you can figure out your biggest mismatch, getting someone who is a better match is the highest-leverage move you can make.

Let’s go back to my daughter’s favorite kind of math:

Employee A: Performance is 50%. If my time helps them improve 50%, they only get to 75%.

Employee B: Performance is 100%. If my time helps them improve 50%, they get to 150%. That’s like adding half of an employee!

Same effort from me. 2x the return. People are your multiplier. The math works better when you’re pouring into the right people working on the right things.

The hard truth: every time I was overwhelmed, I eventually discovered it was self-induced. I wasn’t dealing with the reality that I was overinvesting in the wrong things. Or the people helping me no longer matched what the moment demanded.

Fixing both requires hard calls.
Fixing both requires conviction and creativity.
Fixing both is how you finally outrun the overwhelm.

Lead on,
Dave & Mar