A client sent me a tool the other day. “Could we use something like this?”
I could tell they were excited about it. I hesitated. My job is to diagnose what’s not working and offer a path forward. While I often create something new to solve a problem, I’m just as often advocating for less.
There’s a formula from The Inner Game of Tennis author Timothy Gallwey that captures the problem:
Performance = Potential – Interference
Notice the formula isn’t: Performance = Potential + Training + Tools + ….
I love that we talk a lot about building potential.
But let’s also talk about what is blocking people from doing what they are already capable of doing. Gallwey focused on what he called the “inner game”—the ways our own thinking, fear, and over-control get in the way of performance.
In nonprofit work, interference doesn’t stop at the individual. It shows up in our teams, our boards, and the systems we’ve built around us. Research shows that when we overload people with information, performance drops rather than improves.
In nonprofits, interference shows up in a few predictable places:
- How we think: Too much information, unclear priorities, outdated assumptions.
- How we feel: Fear of conflict, loyalty to founders, lack of confidence. When autonomy and confidence are low, people hold back.
- How we organize: Unclear roles, muddy decision-making, over-reliance on a few people. Patterns are hard to shift once they take hold.
- How our systems are set up: Incentives, processes, and funding structures that create friction. To paraphrase Peter Senge, structure drives behavior.
These don’t happen one at a time. They stack—and that’s why solving just one layer rarely changes the outcome.
Our bias toward adding
Here’s the tricky part. We are wired to add.
As explored on the Hidden Brain podcast, when people are asked to solve a problem, they almost always reach for an additive solution—even when removing something would be more effective.
We add a step.
We add a tool.
We add a layer of support.
In nonprofit work, adding feels like helping. The work is complex. The stakes are high. But over time, what started as a helpful solution becomes interference.
How to know you have an interference problem
Interference doesn’t usually announce itself the way an obvious gap does. It shows up more quietly:
- People know what to do, but don’t follow through
- Meetings are full, but decisions are slow
- Tools exist, but people don’t use them—or they do and nothing changes.
Nothing is obviously broken, but nothing is moving as easily as it should. That’s often a sign that the issue isn’t potential. It’s interference.
What to do about it
If our instinct is to add, then dealing with interference requires a different move. We have to subtract on purpose.
Last year I took the KonMari™ method for tidying and developed a nonprofit version to help people make decisions about what stays and what goes. (We also talked about this on the Nonprofit Radio Show.)
When I see interference, I start with a few simple moves:
- Get clear on the work
What are you actually trying to help people do—today and in the near future? Interference is always relative to something. - Bring the right people into the conversation
Not just the people who built the system—but the people who have to live with it. - Look at what’s actually in play
Tools, processes, expectations, content. Most organizations have more than they realize. - Organize around the work, not the format
Not webinars, documents, or tools—but what people are actually trying to do. - Pay attention to what gets easier
That’s your signal that you removed interference, not something essential.
The shift
We don’t improve performance only by building more capacity. We improve it by removing what’s getting in the way of the capacity that’s already there.
That’s the part of the work we don’t talk about enough. And it’s often the part that matters most.