This List Only Grows

A new colleague once asked: this item has been on the Stop Doing List since last year, so why is it still there?

Let me state the view up front. Methods can iterate; boundaries only grow. A method is a hypothesis and can be replaced by a better one at any time. A boundary is a conclusion, and each one is backed by a real price; withdraw one and you void the conclusion. Why draw the line so sharply? Because the two have different cost structures.

A Boundary Is a Conclusion, a Method Is Only a Hypothesis

The list comes from somewhere plain: every pit we have seen, written down as a prohibition. Behind each one is a real price — in this business the pits are mostly in judgement, in energy, and in the timing of a refusal. The Glacier Capital rule is to book that cost to the organisation, not to the individual. So where does the entry finally land? On the list. Seeing a pit and forgetting it is the most expensive kind of waste. But write it down and the entry stands. Only then does a price become an asset.

Three Kinds of Work That Go In and Never Come Out

First, work whose service boundary cannot be settled. If every investor wants us to tell the founder's story on his behalf, and every conversation needs a roadshow script written on the spot, that is no longer a brokerage service, and it is not what we mean by full-mandate collaboration — it is errand-running with no boundary. Do the arithmetic first. Three partners, twenty to thirty mandates a year, half new and half repeat clients; sixty days and eight checkpoints a mandate, with someone at the table at every checkpoint. That is all the supplies there are. And service with a blurred boundary will quietly eat half the team's time. So on the day we take a mandate we say plainly what we will do and what we will not. That protects both sides.

Second, projects begun before the conditions are in place. Some things can only be waited for, and if the wait does not end, they are set aside. The few conditions the list requires up front turn subjective enthusiasm into checkable items. If they cannot be met, nobody in the market is really ready to move. Starting then is choosing the bench for yourself. The most expensive thing is not money. It is time.

Third, pitches that keep getting thicker. Addition feels safe: one more highlight, one more investor approached, and it seems steadier. But every variable you add raises the other side's cost of deciding by another level. In other words, doing a deal is subtraction. Dare to delete and you have the key.

Why Everyone Rereads the List

After a cross-project post-mortem we found that the several mandates that went through had used the same set of moves. Luck on a single case becomes capability for the organisation only after a review. Distilling and sharing are written into the Glacier Capital culture for exactly this reason: good methods are shared with everyone, and so are prohibitions. So at every review the whole team rereads the list. A new colleague knows where the boundaries are on day one.

Will there ever be a day when the list is finished? No. The year you think subtraction has been taken to its limit, the next year usually still has room. Why? Because every new mandate taken and every new colleague added brings addition back on its own. On this we are fairly confident. The test is simple too: can half the moves still be cut without affecting delivery? We take that measurement once a year.

The "slow" in one fast, one slow rests on this list. Why can choosing be slow? Because the temptations were already refused by the list. Knowing what not to do is what leaves strength for what should be done. Addition takes cleverness; subtraction takes memory. And memory is only reliable once it is written down.