What is the Cost of Saying ‘No’?

This month, I’ve been treat­ing Novem­ber as NO-vember.

It came out of a con­ver­sa­tion about how hard it is, some­times, for lead­ers to say ​‘no’. We get excit­ed and have a desire to help and serve. We’re always look­ing for bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties and poten­tial prof­its, and to improve our orga­ni­za­tions. We want to please our customers.

But, in real­i­ty, some of the most impor­tant deci­sions we make come from say­ing ​‘no’. Think of it as tend­ing a gar­den – of prun­ing back what doesn’t serve you to free up resources, and to encour­age new, and more vig­or­ous, impact­ful growth.

Most orga­ni­za­tions have teams work­ing incred­i­bly hard on too many low things which add up to very lit­tle impact or, in some cas­es, a neg­a­tive impact on the busi­ness. And most of the com­pa­nies we’ve worked with, over the years, often need­ed to prune back dis­tract­ing and under­per­form­ing ideas.

Guilty, as Charged

Now, I’m guilty of say­ing ​‘yes’ way too often, so con­stant­ly work on mas­ter­ing say­ing ​‘no’. As a recov­er­ing ​‘yesa­holic’, I still strug­gle with adding unnec­es­sary com­plex­i­ty to things my team and I do.

But, as exec­u­tives, it’s our job is to con­tin­u­al­ly fig­ure what make sense and to con­tin­u­al­ly cull them from the busi­ness so that pre­cious resources are spent on what mat­ters most.

The Chal­lenge 

• If you were to rate your­self from 0 ‑10, how good are you at say­ing ​‘no’?
• Con­sid­er prac­tic­ing, for the rest of this month, say­ing ​‘no’ before ​‘yes’ on new things that come up
• Look for a hand­ful of things that are cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing that you could say ​‘no’ to for 2024.