We talk about prioritizing like it’s a badge of leadership. But strategic leadership involves far more than what you place at the top of your list; equally important is what you choose to chop, or stop.

As Rose Hollister and Michael Watkins wrote in Harvard Business Review several years ago, “If ‘the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do,’ as Michael Porter famously said … the essence of execution is truly not doing it. That sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly hard for organizations to kill existing initiatives, even when they don’t align with new strategies.”

Deprioritizing means deciding, consciously and publicly, that something that once mattered now matters less. It’s ending—or at least shrinking—initiatives into which you’ve already sunk money, time, and pride. It’s turning to colleagues who’ve given their weekends to a project and telling them their effort will now go kerplunk.

If that sounds like emotional heavy lifting, it is. But leaders who excel here don’t just rely on gut instinct and personal capital. They draw on a body of research—spanning military strategy, behavioral economics, and portfolio governance—that informs how to do it well. Here are some examples.