When you work in a big organization, it's always funny to see how much energy is spent starting new things versus ending things. But services and communities have a life cycle. They live for a while, then they degrade. When you're part of a business or community, and you see something failing, there's often a wish to save it, to bring new life into it.

But here's the thing: some things are really meant to die. Take Christian communities, for example. A good friend of mine, who’s a church nerd, told me that research seems to show that most die after 70 years. It's part of their life cycle.

We waste so many resources—human time, money—trying to keep dying services alive. Sometimes it's better to just let them go. And maybe throw a party for that end (1).

Not everything should be saved.

Action question

Which parts of your service or organization do you feel are dying? Which of these dying parts would it make more sense to let actually die?

Footnotes

(1) This principle builds well on another one: celebrate the end of things.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.