The Additive Trap (and how to avoid it)
Coherence and why true innovation requires subtraction.
Through my strategy work with arts and cultural organisations across the UK, I keep seeing the same pattern repeat. Over-diversification. This piece is my attempt to name it and to argue that doing less, more deliberately, may be the most radical strategy we have.
Arts and cultural organisations rarely struggle because they lack imagination. There is no shortage of ideas or opportunities.
But what happens when we’re encouraged to act on all of these?
The last two decades have brought increasing demands on arts organisations, of all scales, to deliver on an ever growing number of financial and non financial metrics, hampering their ability to play to their strengths.
Every year brings another proposal, another partnership, another revenue stream that promises resilience or reach. Education programmes, wellness projects, digital platforms, consultancy services. The list goes on.
Each new layer makes sense in isolation.
Together, they create what I call the additive trap.
The trap is seductive.
Funders love it, because it looks like innovation.
Leaders love it, because it feels like relevance.
Boards love it, because it sounds like diversification.
But the price is high. Over time, core purpose gets buried under all the extras.
Mission drift: the artistic heart gets buried under side-projects.
Diluted brand: no one (audiences, funders, staff) knows what the organisation truly stands for.
Operational overload: exhausted teams, distracted leadership.
Hidden cross-subsidies: commercial arms quietly propping up fragile core programmes.
Uneven quality: artistic standards suffer as focus is pulled in too many directions.
Financial fragility: new ventures (catering, digital platforms) can bleed money when they falter.
Strategic incoherence: the story becomes “we do everything for everyone”, which, in practice, means “we stand for nothing.”
What was once distinctive becomes diluted.
Additionality masquerades as innovation.
Moreover, this approach risks reducing innovation to a matter of optics: what can be counted, described, and showcased in application forms and impact reports, rather than what actually shifts cultural practices, redistributes resources, or challenges structural inequities.
True innovation requires subtraction.
The courage to say no.
To let go.
To make space.
And to strengthen from the roots up.
The Antidote: Coherence
Coherence is what ties an organisation’s activity into a recognisable whole.
It’s the goldent thread that runs through every programme, every partnership, every income stream, so that, however diverse the work, it all feels like part of the same story.
Three principles can help guide a path a greater coherence:
Add selectively: choose additions that reinforce coherence.
Balance wisely: lead where you’re distinctive; collaborate where coherence is collective.
Subtract courageously: stop activities that blur the story.
A Practical Guide
So how do you assess whether a new initiative strengthens your business model, or risks over-diversification?
If an initiative is built on your unique assets > blaze the trail so you become known for it.
If it adds value but doesn’t define you > share it, collaborate, pool risk, and build it with others.
If it does neither > Stop! Don’t let shiny distractions erode your purpose.
When to say yes
Core Fit
Does it reinforce our mission and artistic distinctiveness?
Does it build on assets we already own (collections, space, data, expertise)?
Does it strengthen our reputation in the ecosystem?
Value Creation
Will it deepen engagement with our audiences, or attract new ones aligned with our purpose?
Does it add distinctive artistic/creative value (not just income)?
Does it create learning or innovation opportunities for the organisation?
Capacity and Focus
Do we have the leadership, staff, and skills to deliver without overstretch?
Are we confidet it won’t distract from, or canablise, the quality of our main artistic offer?
Can we clearly articulate how it fits our story/brand?
Financial sustainability
Does it have a credible pathway to cover its costs (and ideally generate a surplus / profit)?
Are financial risks (market, staffing, investment) understood and acceptable?
If the answers to these question are yes, then introducing something new can make good sense.
When to Collaborate / Share
Where there is potential to add value, but it doesn’t define you, partnership and collabotation might be smarter than solo expansion.
Ask yourself:
Who else shares our aims and ambitions for this?
Is there an opportunity to shift structural challenges, rather than only solve our own problems?
What unique contribution could we make that would be strengthened through collaboration rather than delivery alone?
Does this initiative compete with peers in an unhealthy way, or can it complement their work?
When to Say No
When an initiative is neither distinctive, feasible in partnership or financially sustainable in the long-term, we risk over-diversification.
These are projects that stretch you without lasting benefit.
Subtraction and saying no can feel risky.
But in truth, it is often the most responsible act available.
It is the discipline to remember that strategy is not a list of everything you might do, but a set of choices about what you will not do.
In practice (for funded orgs at least), this will mean renegotiating with funders, reprofiling programme activity, and, of course, doing the hard work of communicating why certain programmes might be paused or removed altogether.
The recent Hodge Review signals a quiet but important shift: away from prescriptive models of doing more, and back toward recognising distinctiveness. Toward the idea that excellence does not look the same everywhere, and that innovation emerges not from uniformity, but from organisations leaning into what only they can offer.
The emphasis on organisations articulating their unique contribution, setting their own KPIs and being assessed on that basis, implicitly acknowledges what many leaders already know: coherence matters. This is great news.
Strength comes not from adding endlessly, but from aligning activity to purpose, assets, and voice.
This creates an opening.
To pause.
To ask harder questions.
To prune as well as plant.
The future of the sector will not be secured by becoming everything to everyone.
It will be secured by organisations that know who they are, what they stand for, and what they are prepared to let go of.
Have you fallen into the additive trap? I’d love to hear your experience, especially if you’re taking bold moves to do less, better.