Why is it difficult to close down failure?

Daniel Kahneman described this as loss aversion: the tendency to experience losses as significantly more painful than equivalent gains are pleasurable. This makes leadership difficult.

In management teams and boards, saying yes is easy. Yes to new initiatives, projects, and bets. Saying no—or shutting something down—is harder. That’s when losses become visible: prestige, ownership, expectations. Decisions get delayed. The result is too many initiatives, too little focus, and organizations that are busy but ineffective.

Our experience is clear: success more often comes from stopping than from starting.

• At Mintra, the breakthrough came when we shut down verticals and focused on oil and gas. Mintra is now a global SaaS company.
• As media founders, we launched three digital publications. Two were closed so we could fully focus on enerWE—the one with the greatest potential. enerWE later became part of Europower and DN Media Group.
• At Europower, the rule was simple: what couldn’t grow had to go. That discipline drove growth.

Success isn’t about starting more.

It’s about prioritizing harder.