The Red Herring of Impact: Could We Do More By Doing Less?
In our endless pursuit to "make a difference," it’s easy to believe that bigger is always better. We start businesses, launch NGOs, scale operations, and chase growth with a single-minded vision: to solve the world’s most pressing problems. We convince ourselves that impact requires scale, and scale demands expansion. More funding. More employees. More reach. But in this pursuit of more, we often lose sight of a simple, uncomfortable truth: the very actions we take to solve problems may deepen them. The relentless drive to leave a legacy becomes a net-negative for people and the planet.
Solving Problems While Creating Others
Consider this: a founder wants to create an eco-friendly product that eliminates plastic waste. Their intentions are noble, their solution promising. But as their business grows, so does their footprint. They fly across the world to pitch investors and attend trade shows. They source raw materials from one country, manufacture in another, and ship globally to meet demand. The green product that started as a solution now has an invisible trail of carbon emissions, logistical waste, and resources consumed to bring it to market.
What if this founder—or all of us, for that matter—sat still for a moment? Not literally motionless, but metaphorically: grounded, deliberate, and reflective. How many emissions could we save if we rejected the instinct to always do more? Could the drive for massive impact be, as Dr. Seuss's The Lorax warned, a dangerous form of “biggering”?
The Ego Trap of Impact
At the core of this pursuit often lies ego—the desire to be seen as a change-maker, a problem-solver, or a hero. We want our names attached to movements. We crave the feeling of accomplishment that comes with building something large and visible. And yet, we seldom pause to ask: At what cost?
Flying to meetings, producing green products, and growing teams all create a footprint. The hours spent marketing and selling our solutions could, ironically, undo any positive change we hoped to create. For every ton of plastic we remove, how many tons of carbon do we emit to make that happen? For every campaign to inspire action, how many resources do we burn convincing people to buy into our vision?
Perhaps, as the Lorax said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.” But what if caring doesn’t always mean acting? What if our most impactful choices aren’t in scaling solutions but in scaling back our ambitions?
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
We have been conditioned to think that meaningful change is synonymous with growth. If a business or NGO isn’t growing, it’s perceived as stagnant or failing. But growth, when pursued uncritically, can become extractive and unsustainable. The world’s problems are not just the result of bad actors; they are the product of over-consumption, overproduction, and overstretching our finite resources.
The systems we aim to fix often rely on the very logic we perpetuate. Endless expansion. Endless pursuit. Endless impact. What if the answer is not to scale solutions endlessly, but to change how we live and work? What if true impact comes from:
Supporting existing systems: Instead of reinventing the wheel, we could help strengthen small, local, and proven initiatives that already work.
Living smaller: Reducing our own consumption, staying local, and finding ways to contribute without jet-setting across the globe.
Asking better questions: What does the planet really need? Is our intervention necessary, or are we adding to the noise?
Doing Less, Meaning More
Sitting still doesn’t mean indifference. It means taking stock of our actions and their consequences. It means questioning whether we are building for impact… or for recognition. The quiet work of doing less—buying less, traveling less, consuming less—may not come with applause or accolades, but it often results in the greatest impact.
A founder who resists scaling their business globally might reduce their carbon footprint tenfold. A non-profit that prioritizes local, small-scale change might prevent the waste and inefficiency of sprawling programs. A family that chooses to grow their own food and repair what they have might leave a legacy far greater than any product or project.
The Call to Sit Still
As we face the crises of climate change, loss of biodiversity, resource depletion, and inequality, perhaps the answer is not another sprawling initiative, but a quiet revolution in how we think about impact. What if we stopped chasing bigger and embraced better? What if we accepted that we don’t need to solve everything ourselves—that sometimes, the world doesn’t need another leader, solution, or project? It just needs us to do less harm.
There’s a certain humility in sitting still. A recognition that the problems we face are too big for any one person, business, or organization to solve. It’s a reminder that our role may not be to fix the world, but to live in it responsibly—to tread lightly, act thoughtfully, and leave room for the planet to heal itself.
Sometimes, the greatest impact comes not from our need to be seen as heroes, but from having the courage to do nothing at all.
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