If you want to accelerate your progress toward unprecedented results, start saying no.
Say no during the strategy off-site and say no after it’s over.
Pet Priorities
Every organization has a subset of folks who believe the current priorities are wrong—or at least lacking. To wit, they have a specific idea about what should be done, urgently.
Usually, these unprioritized projects have not been simply overlooked. Instead, they were deliberately excluded from a very small list of priorities that are critical to the strategy.
But when you are convinced that your project MUST happen, it seems obvious that it simply got lost in the shuffle, or that no one else understands its importance.
Why isn’t this project on the top of the list? It should be!
Meanwhile, the founder or CEO has sweated bullets to craft a breakthrough strategy (at least my clients have). She both shared and taught that strategy, ensuring that it was embedded in the roadmap as well as the budget for key initiatives.
Leaving out that project was not an error.
Good People Innovate
Smart, creative people will constantly cook up new ideas. Processes, tactics, conferences that demand attendance; even better platforms to MASSIVELY speed up progress.
It is that kind of energy and confidence that produces solutions to wicked problems or explodes growth through imaginative marketing.
But among that creative maelstrom hides a backlog of pet projects that can distract from real strategic priorities.
If the Venn diagram of actual company priorities and everyone’s individual points of view doesn’t consist of a single set of nearly identical items, then the outliers are cannibalizing the company’s strategy.
How can a founder impress on the team that—while many of their concerns are valid and important, they are not going to be resolved any time soon?
Underground Complaints
I have seen this over and over in my work. Often, I coach both the founder and the individual function leaders.
Over many conversations, I learn what each leader believes is either the most important priority—or the biggest obstacle. Sometimes these are concerns for their own team or department, but just as frequently, the concern extends to the entire company.
The department leaders will mention them by way of showing their commitment. On the surface, it seems conscientious.
But at heart, they are complaints.
Wish List Wishy-Washy-ness
One client company was in the data analytics business. They gave advertisers information about their spots’ reach, response, reaction and results. I led their strategy retreat, which included all the department heads.
The team aligned on a pivot. Instead of continuing as a high-touch provider, they would invest in their AI-driven, self-serve platform, making it much more robust and comprehensive; setting the stage to scale without intense account management.
It was a big change. But everyone participated in crafting it and understood it.
The mischief started immediately after the off-site, in my individual coaching calls.
***
The customer success leader reported that clients wanted more one-on-one help. Without adding more agents to his team, he said, the company would lose every client.
This had come up during the off-site. Everyone agreed that the transition might be hard, including the loss of some clients.
There was no plan to add head count to customer success.
***
The VP of Sales told me he needed new collateral because it was “impossible to sell” without a working demo of the forthcoming platform. They would need more animations, videos, decks and more.
***
Finally, the Head of Engineering was emphatic that they couldn’t possibly transition to the new platform until the technical debt was handled. It was a prerequisite.
***
They didn’t only tell me. Each one floated their idea in leadership meetings. They got pseudo answers.
The CEO didn’t say yes.
But she also didn’t say no.
Each leader believed their ideas were under consideration.
They were not.
Not Yes. Not No.
When the CEO says neither yes nor no, it is the worst of all possible worlds.
Because each leader thought his idea was under consideration they continued to campaign, and to mentally work on their secret plans rather than on the actual strategy.
Plus, without hearing “no”, every individual is sure they have identified a high-value, strategic project. That misapprehension begins to skew their understanding of the strategy, undermining real alignment.
Saying No
It’s hard for founders and leaders to say no.
Like most of us, they are basically agreeable and want to avoid conflicts within the company.
But any start-up that survives eventually realizes that they can’t say yes to very much. In fact, they must say no to most things. [Click to tweet this thought.]
In a terrific article by Hubspot founder, Brian Halligan, he shares a brilliant approach to this.
Within their annual planning, they derive a small list of critical initiatives for the year. But they also create a list called Omissions. That’s the most painful part of the process, he says, “because they are usually excellent ideas with high potential—but necessarily omitted because we are better off doing a few things very well.”
Anyone who has their own short list of pet projects, is not fully focused and aligned with the strategy. Instead, they are LARP-ing alignment— biding their time until they can do can get to the thing they know is really most important.
CEOs and founders are best to be explicit about what is and is not a priority. In fact, they should document those ideas (the great ones) that we are not doing now or anytime soon. [Of course, the non-great ideas shouldn’t be documented but should be dismissed in a discussion.]
Nice Is Not Strategic
Saying no may ruffle feathers. But it is transparent and leaves no ambiguity. It provides space for people’s annoyance and for their recovery.
Waffling over “no” seems like the “nice” thing to do. It isn’t.
It has no integrity because it is inconsistent with the strategy. No—to what isn’t in the strategy—has integrity.
Make the list of what you’re NOT DOING while at the off-site. Visibly. Aloud.
Later, when people propose something on that list, remind them of all the reasons it didn’t make the cut.
Of course, completely new ideas didn’t make that Not Doing list. But unless there is a truly emergent case for adding something, ideas NOT on the strategic list of priorities are preemptively axed.
Power and Courtesy
So how do you say no without being discourteous or dismissive? Here are some basic guidelines:
Listen Keenly. Listening keenly requires hearing and acknowledging. When Dave mentions the technical debt as an aside (for the fourth time), take note. It isn’t really an aside. It’s subtext. Many CEOs would skip over it. But ignoring it leaves it to fester.
Underground complaints never go away until they’re addressed.
Acknowledge, Appreciate and Empathize. Listening keenly also means listening for golden nuggets and lumps of coal. Good ideas that didn’t make the cut are still valuable. So, respond to the idea and its merit. It may become germane later.
Technical debt is a problem and will get worse. By acknowledging that reality, we validate what Dave is saying. But we’re not addressing it now.
Of course, there will also be less great ideas. To them, you say__________ (three guesses what goes in the blank…).
Be Direct. Being direct doesn’t mean being unkind. But it requires honesty, not “niceness”. When we “nicely” avoid answering, it’s misleading and creates false hope.
If otherwise good ideas are not part of the current plan, then say so. “No, we are not going to address that in the foreseeable future. Let’s re-look at it next year.”
When the idea is entirely counter to the strategy, as with the customer success team, don’t say you will think about it or revisit it later. Say no.
You can provide real commiseration, but not appeasement. “I understand. It’s a tough transition. I will think about coaching resources for your team. But we are not hiring more agents.”
Stingy is Strategic
Warren Buffett is quoted as having said, “Our investment philosophy borders on lethargy.”
I don’t recommend lethargy, but I do recommend extreme stinginess in your strategic commitments.
If you have a strategy, then you know exactly what the priorities are. Before anything more goes on that list, it should pass through a meat grinder-like gauntlet.
There will always be some team consternation over what you don’t have, haven’t invested in, and can’t do. If those remain as second-guesses, it corrodes alignment. The strategy is the ultimate arbiter of how to spend your limited resources.
For 2025, consider this resolution: Say NO to anything that isn’t a resounding, strategic YES!