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When a warehousing business, or in fact any business, grows to a reasonable size, senior management should face the issue that certain branches are not performing as well as others, and perhaps a few branches are not performing at all. When this happens, the sensible but difficult strategy is to prune the trees.
One example is a well-known specialty retail chain. A few years ago, the founder determined that the original brand that enabled the startup was no longer performing, and that brand was sold to another enterprise. Not long after, the enterprise was liquidated and the brand disappeared. For most entrepreneurs, the pain might have been unbearable.
In this case, senior management recognized that the tree must be pruned. There are far more examples of ailing brands which remain on life support because management is not willing to recognize that euthanasia is the sensible strategy.
Tree pruning exists on a personal level as well as corporate. We frequently suggest to clients that they should maintain a “stop doing” list and try to eliminate activities that were useful once but are time wasters today. In a dynamic economy, it makes sense to recognize which branches of the tree are growing, and which ones should be eliminated.
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