March 2026
The Kill List: What High-Performing Boards Stop Funding First
“If leadership cannot say what should stop, it has not set a strategy. It has simply protected a portfolio of worthy activity.”
Paul Phillips FRSA
Boards do not create strategic advantage by funding everything.
They create it by stopping what no longer deserves capital, management attention, or strategic protection.
That is the issue.
- Not a lack of ambition.
- Not a lack of activity.
- A lack of disciplined action.
A kill list is the discipline of deciding what must stop so that the few initiatives that matter can earn the right to scale.
When the board or investment committee asks for business cases, what do they want?
Sustainable Strategy Brief Live – Episode 2
We have successfully launched a YouTube channel @SustainableStrategyBriefLive
Episode 2: Turning sustainability growth ambition into credible business cases.
- Boards do not fund ambition. They fund proof.
- Capital logic is killing weak sustainability strategies, and it should.
- If the case cannot show cash, risk, trade-offs, assumptions, and governance, it is not investable.
- Most sustainability strategies fail in the middle, not at the start.
- The new test is simple. Move from reason to care, to reason to fund.
Next steps→ If these themes resonated, do watch a short 3m. 17sec video in which Paul and Allen Cedeno provide further insights into credible business cases.
“Today’s CEOs have moved from moral value to business value, aligning sustainability with core business risks and operational realities such as costs, customers, commercial motions, and capital investments.”
Bain & Company, 2025
The proof. Why kill-list discipline matters—and belongs on the kill list
A serious board-level stop-doing review does four things:
- It removes initiatives with weak evidence or low strategic relevance.
- It frees capital and leadership time for stronger priorities.
- It forces management to clarify the value logic of what remains.
- It creates a more disciplined route from ambition to execution.
- Lessens stress and
A good board does not cut to look tough.
It cuts to improve strategic coherence.
The test is simple.
Can management explain clearly and briefly:
- The business problem
- The value driver
- The baseline
- The owner
- The metric
- The decision gate
If not, continuation should not be automatic.
What usually belongs on the kill list first
The answer will vary by organisation, but the first areas that usually deserve scrutiny are predictable.
- Reporting theatre – activities that produce meetings, papers, dashboards, and updates but do not improve investment decisions or operating choices.
- Pilots with no route to scale – If there is no owner, no baseline, no metric, and no commercial logic, a pilot is not progress. It is adrift with better branding.
- Duplicate metrics – When several teams measure similar issues in different ways, trust falls and governance weaken.
- Weak-evidence initiatives – Good intentions are not enough. If the evidence remains soft, funding should not remain automatic.
- Orphaned sustainability work – If an initiative sits in a specialist corner without full leadership ownership, it usually struggles to influence the operating model.
What does better look like in practice?
The board-level discipline is straightforward:
- Value driver
- Baseline
- Initiative
- Metric
- Decision gate
Once this sequence is explicit, leadership teams can make stronger choices:
- Scale what is working
- Adjust what is partially working
- Stop what does not earn the right to continue
That is what turns sustainability from a broad agenda into a repeatable operating discipline.
What does this process look like in practice?
The capital logic sprint path
Value driver → baseline → initiative → metric → decision gate
Once this sequence is explicit, leadership teams can make stronger decisions:
- Scale what is working.
- Adjust what is partially working.
- Stop what does not earn the right to continue.
That is what turns sustainability from a statement of intent into a repeatable operating discipline.
A quick self-check you can run in 10 minutes
Ask your leadership team to answer these:
- What should come off the agenda now?
- What are we funding out of habit rather than conviction?
- Which initiative has the weakest claim on capital?
- What are we protecting because it is easy to defend, not because it performs?
- Where is reporting activity impacting decision quality?
Final call
A kill list is not anti-sustainability.
It is anti-drift.
High-performing boards understand that sustainable strategy improves when leaders stop protecting weak work, stop funding theatre, and stop mistaking activity for progress.
In short:
- Kill lists create room for real strategy
- Real strategy requires disciplined choice
- Disciplined choice is what makes sustainability fundable, governable, and scalable
Subscribe to Sustainable Strategy Brief for future board-level insights.
Remember
A sustainable strategy is not a catalogue of worthy activity. It is a repeatable system for converting scarce resources into measurable advantage, in cost, revenue, risk, and trust.
If you cannot explain what should stop, the strategy is still too soft for capital.
Warm regards, Paul
Dr. Paul A. Phillips
Dr Paul A. Phillips Professor of Strategic Management and practitioner with CEO/board-level delivery experience
Founder and CEO of Investment-Grade Strategy Partners.
Author of Sustainable Strategic Management: Leadership with Purpose (with Routledge).
Founder and Host of Sustainable Strategy Brief Live.