Last Updated: November 2026
Read Time: 3-5 minutes
Author: Andrew Lofredo, CEO, CRE Vertical Advisors
I first heard about minimum effective dose (MED) when I got involved in strength training. Essentially, it is defined as the smallest amount of volume, intensity, and frequency needed to trigger measurable gains in muscle strength and size.
I know there are a lot of BS articles with oddly connected business lessons from non-traditional business sources. However, the following recently occurred and I thought it was worth sharing.
As part of a strategy to execution audit, one of the bespoke advisory services we provide alongside asset management, property management and brokerage, we were recently working with a long-established ownership group looking to increase their operating efficiency. They did a lot of things right, but, like a lot of firms, struggled to connect the dots among the multiple things they were doing well when viewed solely at the specific task level. Each person was competent at their own work. Ownership was getting a lot of information, but in separate pieces, and the line between which decisions belonged to management and which belonged to ownership had never been clearly drawn.
I was struggling with how to articulate this and how to present options to address it, some more drastic than others. As I was working through it, MED popped into my head, and along with it, Bezos' One-Way Door and Two-Way Door decisions.
In addition to the definition I provided above, MED also comes up in programming (i.e., creating your workout plan). When you are modifying a plan to address a weak point, it sometimes makes sense to make incremental changes to see what works. If you make broad changes to everything at once, you cannot pinpoint what caused the desired change. You also can't tell which changes were unnecessary, so you end up carrying all of them forward.
The One-Way/Two-Way door concept gave me a way to rank the level of drasticness (not a real word) of each option, based on the ability to pivot from the decision. If you are not familiar with the concept, one-way door decisions are irreversible or high-stakes decisions, while two-way door decisions are reversible or changeable choices. Permanently restructuring who reports to whom or hiring someone to take over decisions ownership has always made, are closer to one-way doors. Writing down which decisions management can make on its own and which need ownership's sign-off, asking that every issue brought to ownership include management's recommendation and the decision required, or holding a short monthly meeting where property management, accounting and leasing report to ownership together, are two-way doors. If they don't work, you change them back.
Maybe MED popped into my head because I was in the process of updating my own programming, but whatever the reason, it dawned on me that the options should be structured with MED first, then ranked by One-Way/Two-Way door decisions. So I structured a phased plan starting off with MED and Two-Way door decisions with quick feedback loops to address the major pain points. The one-way door decisions stay on the table. They come later, once the early changes have shown what is actually working, so they get made with real information, or are not needed at all, because, in some cases the early changes resolve enough that the bigger decision never needs to be made.
Put simply, start with the smallest reversible change that tests the diagnosis, and use what you learn before making the decision that is hard to undo. Sometimes the right dose is a restructuring, a new manager or a new system. MED is about sequencing those decisions, so the irreversible ones get made with the most information.
A lot of business owners deal with these types of issues; I certainly do. I can sometimes be impatient and want to change everything at once when I see a fracture in the system. I specifically chose the word "system" because systems thinking is a big part of what we do in both our management and advisory practice. Each business is a system and each property is a system, both of which are normally components in a larger system. When you make a change to one component of a system, it can have unintended consequences. Optimizing one part of a system can make the whole system perform worse.
Consider a property manager focused on resolving tenant issues quickly, who handles everything at the property level without bothering ownership. Tenants are happy. Then ownership learns, late, that a major tenant raised concerns about their space months ago. A renewal decision needed ownership's attention and the time to act on it. Property management did its job well by its own measure, and ownership lost time on one of the most important decisions for the asset.
When the problem and the timing allow, I believe taking an MED approach gives you quicker, easier to interpret feedback loops, which allow you to iterate and prioritize your decisions. It also asks less of the people who have to absorb the change.
This article is for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. The views expressed are those of the author and are based on market conditions as of the date of publication, which are subject to change. Readers should consult with their own legal, financial, and tax advisors before making any real estate or capital planning decisions.