Name the last thing your team stopped doing.

Dispatch · to the desk of one working leader

Name the last thing your team stopped doing.

The observation

Ana clicks through her new customer dashboard in three minutes, and the room leans in. It shows which customers haven't ordered in sixty days, color-coded by account size, and she built it on Wednesday with an AI assistant doing most of the typing. Someone says "this is great," and two colleagues ask whether they can use it on Monday. Someone else wants a version for the sales team.

Tom goes next. He spent his week on old pieces of work that were slowing everyone down: a weekly report that went to thirty inboxes and had run out of readers, and an approval step that checked the same numbers twice. He retired the report and merged the approval into the step before it. "The Monday report is gone," he says, "and the second sign-off on refunds is now part of the first one, so refunds go out a day sooner." He talks for about two minutes with Ana's dashboard still on the screen. You nod, say "thanks, Tom," and move to the next item, meaning to thank him properly after the meeting.

Every team that meets like this learns, within a few weeks, which kind of work gets a reaction, and that's the kind people bring next time. In a company where every team reviews its week this way, the list of reports, tools and approvals grows a little every month.

The pattern

We tend to give the credit to whoever built the new thing. On a team with AI tools, building takes a couple of days, and the harder call is deciding what to take away.

Boris Cherny, who leads Claude Code at Anthropic, wrote a post on X in 2026 about what roles might look like in the future, using his own team as the example. He sorts the work into five kinds: prototypers, who come up with many ideas, most of which don't ship; builders, who turn a prototype into a production-grade product; sweepers, who clean up, simplify the system and take shipped work back out; growers, who keep iterating on a product to improve its fit with the market; and maintainers, who keep a mature system secure, reliable, fast and efficient as it scales. Many people do two of these, sometimes three, he adds, and the roles aren't really tied to job function.

In the mix he suggests for each stage of a product, the sweeper is part of the core group at all three stages.

Ana's dashboard came together on Wednesday with an AI assistant, and every tool like it joins the list of things somebody on the team updates when the data changes and explains to each new hire, until a person like Tom decides it can go. The weekly review gives that work no natural place, because the demo needs something new on the screen. Tom gets his proper thanks after the meeting, one-on-one, by the coffee machine, where the rest of the team doesn't hear it. Walking back to his desk, Tom is already thinking, "Next week, I'll bring something to demo."

Hold this line

The move

The moment. Your next team review, when someone mentions in passing, almost apologetically, that they've cut a step.

The check: who sweeps? Try to name the last thing your team stopped doing, and the person who made that call.

1. Make room for the sweep. Before you close the demos, add one standing question about anything the team stopped doing or simplified that week. Ask about the answers the way you'd ask about a prototype: what changed, and who it helps. The first time, go first yourself with something small, like a recurring meeting you dropped, so people see what counts.

2. Credit the sweeper by name. Say who did the work and how many hours a week it frees up. If merging that approval gets refunds out a day sooner, say that: one day faster for every customer waiting on a refund. Write it down wherever your team records its wins, next to the new builds, so it's there when people look back at the month.

Say this: "Who took something off our plate this week? Tell us what it was."

What it costs. The first few times, someone's favorite workflow comes up for removal and the room has to talk it through with that person sitting there, sometimes the person who built it, which can feel awkward. Some weeks there won't be an answer, and it's fine to say so and move on.

If you're on the team: when you retire a report or cut a step, bring it to the review yourself, with one number for the time it gives back.

Tell me what happened. What did your team name first? I read every reply.

Building is easy now.
Thank the person who knows what to take away.

See you Tuesday.

Rui

P.S.  Worth your margin: Boris Cherny's post on X about what roles might look like in the future, with the Claude Code team as his example. It includes the mix he suggests for each stage of a product.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this, send it to them.

Someone forward this to you? Margin. is free, five minutes, every Tuesday.