The best way to improve often is by removing negatives rather than adding positives.
Taleb's argument. Removing what harms is more robust than adding what helps, because the harms are more reliably identified — which is why medicine's biggest gains came from sanitation, not treatment.
In practice
- A team that cancels three meetings and adds nothing recovers more capacity than the productivity tool bought the previous quarter.
- A patient advised to stop two of their six medications improves, and no new prescription would have done it.