What a thrill to see the adventures of Artemis II looping around the Moon and splashing down safely in the Pacific. The headlines over the weekend were about distance, speed and survival. Fair enough. It was the furthest humans have travelled from Earth, edging past Apollo 13’s record. And NASA's concern about reentry - rather worryingly revealed once the crew were on their way back - thankfully amounted to nothing.

But the more interesting story is the strategy behind the Artemis II planning. It was all about what could be stripped away.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft was designed with subtraction in mind:

Its regenerable carbon dioxide and humidity removal system saves more than 100 pounds and shrinks the space needed from the equivalent of 143 basketballs to just 16.

Its exercise device is not a gym bolted to the wall but a flywheel system compact enough to do several jobs at once.

Even the waste system was built around mass and volume efficiency, because every unnecessary kilo becomes a problem when you are trying to leave Earth and get back again. OK: the $38m toilet ended up not working properly. Bygones.

None of these reductions is about austerity. It is strategy.

Good design is more often an act of removal before it is an act of creation. You need to strip out what doesn't earn its place. You need to make each part work harder. You have to refuse the comforting clutter “just in case” you need something later.

Focussed strategy doing better than bloated planning isn't a new idea.

Take the de Havilland Mosquito from the Second World War: as fast as a 400mph fighter, and ten times lighter a bomber, its key defence was speed, rather than gun turrets.

So it got away with two crew, not seven or ten, and yet it was still capable of carrying a 4,000-pound bomb like the other bombers.

The Mosquito had less of almost everything that didn’t matter for the job to be done.

This is the bit so many leaders miss.

Creative strategy is not brainstorming more things to do, or responding to every desire, need or want from the shop floor.

Creative strategy is deciding what to stop doing.

Creative strategy is reducing the number of priorities so the real priorities have space to breathe. It is shrinking the agenda so the mission can shape every decision. It is cutting meetings, projects, initiatives, messages, metrics and committees until the remaining few become all that matters.

Most organisations don't lack ideas. But they fail to make the most of their strengths because they carry too much weight.

Too many goals.

Too many words.

Too many competing promises.

Too many people protecting legacy work that should've died a long time ago.

So teams slow down, decision-making gets lax, and nobody can tell what matters most any more.

The organisation mistakes busyness for lift-off.

Whether you're developing a lesson, a brand, a strategy or a new school campus, don't ask “What should we add next?”

This week, ask instead: “What can we remove without regretting it later?”

And then prepare for lift-off.