## Notes from 29 January 2026 [[2026-01-28|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-01-30|Next note →]] [Shabad’s piece in _Civil Service World_ (27 Jan 2026)](https://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/the-government-runs-too-many-initiatives-at-once-focus-makes-organisations-faster-not-slower) is brilliant because it treats “too many initiatives” as more than a generic prioritization slogan. He explains overload as a predictable organizational failure: portfolios expand through optimism bias, become hard to stop because of loss aversion, get steered by salience bias, and end up with fragmented accountability - so the _cumulative_ burden only shows up once delivery degrades. What I like most is that it connects focus to _how things actually work in practice_ (attention is finite; governance boards multiply; review becomes politically awkward), and even borrows the classic lesson from complex systems: piling on more parallel work can make outcomes slower and less predictable. It also clicked for me as a clean way to communicate a “tidiness matters to government” intuition. [[Jennifer Pahlka]]’s “[Channel your inner Marie Kondo](https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/channel-your-inner-marie-kondo)” argument is basically: governments don’t just burden citizens; they bury themselves under layers of mandates, constraints, procurement rules, and “policy clutter” that makes implementation fragile - and the executive can only shield people so much if the rulebook itself is a mess. Shabad gives me the leadership-language version of the same insight: **focus as a source of speed, not constraint** - the idea that doing fewer things creates slack, reduces arbitration overhead, and strengthens “[[Executive Decisiveness]]” because the system can actually move when it counts.