Digital discipline: Why doing less may deliver more value in 2026

Josh Hulst, Managing Partner and Digital Strategy Lead at Michigan Software Labs, shares a three-step framework for helping digital leaders prioritize with confidence, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and maintain momentum when plans and priorities keep shifting.

What happens when you try to say yes to everything?

If you’re leading digital strategy right now, you know the squeeze of requests coming in from every direction. Your board is pressing you for innovation, your executives are pushing for revenue growth, and your teams are asking for new tools and systems.

Every request sounds valid, and saying yes feels like the collaborative thing to do. But the reality is most leaders don’t have the budget, bandwidth, or certainty to say yes to everything.

Recent research from KPMG and Gartner’s CFO Council show continued cost pressure, tighter scrutiny, and slow team growth, even as transformation expectations rise. In other words: leaders are being asked to deliver more, while the resources and expectations around them continue to shift. 

To succeed, you need to treat prioritization as a discipline, not a one-time event. When leaders try to say yes to everything, nothing moves fast enough to show results. Gartner’s 2025 CIO Agenda Report confirms what many leaders already feel: the biggest barrier to digital execution isn’t budget or talent, but competing priorities. 

Focus may be the greatest advantage you can create for yourself heading into 2026. If you can narrow your scope and communicate tradeoffs clearly, you’ll create space for your teams to finish work, measure outcomes, and learn from results. 

We see this principle every day in software development. When a team tries to build every feature at once, delivery slows and quality drops. But when scope is narrowed and value is delivered early, each release strengthens the next. The same applies at the portfolio level. Digital leaders move quicker when they prioritize smaller, well-scoped initiatives that show results sooner.

This kind of digital discipline takes practice. Here’s how effective teams build it into how they plan and deliver. 

Decide what deserves your focus

Every digital leader faces more good ideas than capacity to execute them, so your first step is deciding which ones will create the most progress right now. That work begins with a simple question: “If we take this on, what will have to wait?”

This single question changes the conversation from volume to value and helps leaders make decisions that are visible, defensible, and tied to business outcomes. 

At Michigan Software Labs, I use four simple lenses to help leaders filter their opportunities:

1. Business impact: Will it generate measurable value through revenue growth, efficiency, or reduced risk?
2. Strategic alignment: Does it support the direction your organization is already moving?
3. Capacity building: Will it strengthen your foundation for future work?
4. Momentum: Can it deliver meaningful results within 6-12 months?

Initiatives that rise to the top deserve commitment through funding, ownership, and clear success measures. Research from McKinsey found that companies focusing on a few clear digital priorities tied to measurable business outcomes were 1.7x more likely to exceed expectations in their digital transformations. This same discipline applies to any digital initiative: clarity beats volume. 

Make tradeoffs visible

Once priorities are set, people need to understand two things: what earned attention and what is waiting its turn. 

Start by explaining why the chosen initiatives made the list, by connecting each to its business goals and measurable impact. When the team can see that Project A was deferred because it lacked capacity and Project B moved forward because it supported a growth target, they’ll usually stop asking “Why didn’t you do mine?” and begin wondering “How can I support the initiatives that are moving forward?”

Then show what was deferred and why. A simple “not now” list or short summary of postponed ideas gives your team a place to park strong ideas until the timing, capacity, or business case improves. That visibility reduces pressure around new requests and helps future proposals come in better framed against the same criteria.

For example, a team might defer full automation and start with a manual or semi-automated workflow that delivers immediate value and sets up a stronger foundation for automation to succeed later. 

Teams don’t need every rationale, but just enough clarity to align their own work. As you share priorities, pressure test them with the people closest to the details both to confirm you didn’t miss anything important and to build buy-in. Over time, this practice builds a shared understanding of what progress looks like and gives executives a clearer view of what the organization can realistically deliver.

Review and recalibrate regularly 

Making tradeoffs visible is only valuable if you return to them often. For most, a quarterly cadence works well.

Each review should test whether your strategy still matches the reality of your market and your capacity. Look for signals that suggest it’s time to adjust focus:

Learning signals

• Pilot outcomes that prove (or disprove) the assumptions behind your priorities
• KPI trends that show where progress is accelerating or stalling
• Evidence that a smaller, faster move could deliver greater value than the original plan

*This is why tightly scoped initiatives matter. They give you early learning so you can adjust your approach while still moving toward the same goals.

External signals

• Shifts in customer behavior or demand that reveal new opportunities 
• Market or regulatory changes that create risk or open the door to differentiation
• Vendor or platform updates that affect cost, integration, or security

Internal signals

• Changes in team capacity, bandwidth, or key role availability
• Technical constraints uncovered during build, like data quality, integration, or tech debt
• Related efforts that change the order or timing of what comes next

For example, if a project hits unexpected complexity—say an integration or workflow turns out bigger than expected—you can narrow scope and release the most valuable piece first. You’ll build trust and keep momentum while the long-term solution takes shape.

How to structure the review

Aim for a short working session focused on four questions:

1. What finished? 
2. What’s in motion? 
3. What’s changed? 
4. What’s paused? 

McKinsey’s research also found that top economic performers update their digital strategies much more frequently than other companies, underscoring the value of returning to your plan regularly as priorities shift. 

The discipline in this article is the same approach I use when helping teams turn digital priorities into real outcomes. When leaders focus their efforts, make tradeoffs visible, and review regularly, they deliver measurable results faster.

If your organization is heading into a new planning cycle, the most important work I’d suggest for you is to establish this process of digital discipline. If you want to compare notes or talk through what this could look like inside your organization, I’m always open to a conversation.