Are You Tolerating Too Much Crap?

The business world is undergoing a massive shift with the rise of AI. Change is happening at an unprecedented pace, bringing uncertainty and disruption across industries. We’ve seen similar technological waves before the internet revolution, followed by the mobile era, then cloud computing and SaaS, and now AI. Each shift has reshaped the fundamentals of how businesses operate, and AI is no exception.

This wave is challenging long-held assumptions, just as previous ones did. In times of rapid change, the most resilient organizations are those that stay focused on the fundamentals: understanding customer expectations, delivering exceptional experiences, and focusing on loyalty. Ultimately, the ability to retain customers and drive growth is what differentiates companies that endure and thrive from those that fade away.
Now, more than ever corporations have to focus on cutting down waste and non value adding activities at every level of the organization. If you tolerate too much waste or crap, you will be doomed. One way to approach this is by examining how your organization conducts its planning process and how effectively you execute those plans. While we’re considering this at a macro level, you can also use this framework to map out your top initiatives and see where each one falls.

The framework is built on two key axes: planning and delivery (execution). The Y-axis represents planning, ranging from conservative at the lower end to aggressive at the upper end. The X-axis represents delivery, spanning from falling short of expectations on one side to meeting expectations on the other.

In general, larger organizations tend to maintain a balance when it comes to planning. You can’t have every initiative fall into the aggressive planning zone because multiple layers of the organization introduce their own buffers and performance cushions along the way. As a result, things often become bloated, and the original intent behind certain initiatives can get diluted. This inherent padding can slow down execution and make it harder to drive truly ambitious plans across the board.

Now, let’s look at each zone individually.

Crap tolerating zone

Conservative planning combined with poor delivery. Delivery fails to meet even the most modest of expectations. This is an area where you as a business are tolerating a lot of crap and hence called the “crap tolerance zone.”

If a significant number of your initiatives fall into this quadrant, it means your organization is tolerating a lot of inefficiency, wasted effort, and underperformance. Over time, this can severely impact overall productivity, slow down growth, and create a culture of complacency. Identifying and addressing these inefficiencies is crucial to maintaining a high-performance organization.

All talk, no action zone

The next quadrant represents aggressive planning but poor delivery the “All Talk, No Action” zone. In this scenario, there’s a lot of ambitious goal-setting but little to no follow-through. Organizations, teams, and individuals in this quadrant tend to make big promises but fail to deliver.

Instead of taking accountability, they often justify their lack of execution with excuses blaming dependencies on other teams, shifting market conditions, or external factors beyond their control. This can sometimes evolve into a victim mentality, where the focus shifts to explaining failures rather than solving them.

To break out of this zone, it’s critical for organizations to diagnose why execution is falling short. Analyze and conclude if it’s due to unrealistic planning, or perhaps a lack of resources or misaligned teams, or deeper cultural issues. The goal should be to bridge the gap between c and real results.

Comfort zone

The third quadrant, located at the bottom right, represents conservative planning with delivery that meets or exceeds expectations. This is interesting because, while the planning itself isn’t ambitious, the execution is solid. You didn’t aim for the stars, but at least you delivered on what was promised.

This zone is often where business-as-usual or continuous improvement initiatives land in most Organizations. They tend to be predictable, well-defined processes where inputs lead to consistent outputs with minimal deviation. It’s a stable, low-risk zone where things run smoothly.
That said, this isn’t necessarily a bad place to be. It’s not lethargic or inefficient just comfortable. In most organizations, you’ll find a mix of initiatives here alongside more ambitious efforts in the top-right quadrant. The key is ensuring this zone doesn’t dominate your strategic priorities, as real breakthroughs rarely come from conservative planning alone.

High-performance zone

This brings us to the top-right quadrant, which I call the High-Performance Zone. This is where you want your most critical initiatives to land initiatives that will shape the future of your company and organization. Here, you set aggressive targets and work relentlessly to meet them.

This zone is where high-performance players thrive. When a company is in its zero-to-one phase, it naturally operates heavily in this quadrant because it has to. Execution must be sharp, and every initiative must contribute meaningfully to growth. As the company scales up, you may have a mix of initiatives some well-understood, proven ones in the comfort zone (bottom-right) and the remaining in the high-performance zone.

The key takeaway? Any time initiatives drift into the left half of the diagram, it’s a red flag. It calls for deep introspection. If an initiative falls into the Crap Tolerance Zone (bottom-left), that’s especially concerning. If the planning was already conservative and you still failed to deliver, it signals serious issues whether with teams, leadership, or execution. These cases require a much stricter evaluation to understand what’s going wrong and take corrective action.

Practical application of this diagram to your initiatives

It’s crucial to map out your initiatives and see where they truly stand. As part of your reflection process if you go through your key initiatives and rate them on the aggressiveness of the plan and how well those initiatives were delivered, you can truly assess how well you are shaping the culture of the organization.

It’s a lot easier than you think to rate your initiatives along these axes.

The aggressiveness of plans may seem subjective, but you can quantify it with a structured approach. One way to do this is by measuring the percentage improvement a plan targets compared to the prior period.

• Conservative plans aim for 5–10% improvement over the previous period.
• Aggressive plans target 100%+ improvement, essentially doubling performance.
• Everything in between can be categorized into a scale, allowing you to bucket initiatives based on their level of ambition.

This kind of mathematical framework helps eliminate ambiguity, making it easier to assess how ambitious a plan truly is and ensuring alignment between expectations and execution.

Measuring delivery is a lot easier. You can use a similar scale to measure delivery effectiveness.

Plotting them on this framework allows you to assess their positioning and effectiveness. By doing so, you gain a clearer picture of which initiatives are on track, which need adjustment, and where resources might be misaligned. This final evaluation helps ensure that your planning and execution are working in harmony rather than allowing inefficiencies to persist.

Final Thoughts

So here’s the deal: your business can’t afford to sit in the “Crap Tolerating Zone” for too long. We’re all about making big, bold moves but must be backed by solid execution. The key is finding that balance setting aggressive goals but ensuring your teams are fully equipped to get there. Remember, it’s not just about achieving every single goal it’s about providing the ones that matter most to get the attention they deserve. So, get out there, take a step back, assess where your initiatives are, and make sure your plans and execution are indeed in sync.
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