Saying No — the Secret to a CTOs Success

Practicing the Art of Strategic Refusal to Drive Focus & Long-Term Success

Welcome Leaders!

No.

It’s a little word that can have a profound impact.

In fact, in the case of product & technology leaders saying “no” can be foundational to their success.

But, saying no is harder than it looks.

So today I’ll teach you to master the art & science of it.

Btw, to help inspire you, I found a montage of the word “no” being used in movies.

Enjoy!

Bobby

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Early in my career as a CTO I said yes to everybody and everything thinking that it was part of my job to get all the businesses needs met.

I almost burnt out myself & my team just getting it all done, and to top it all off the stakeholders changed their mind about what they wanted anyway.

After that experience I knew that saying yes to everything wasn’t the right answer.

In fact, saying yes to everything is actually one of the worst things you can do as a technology leader and far too many VPs and CTOs I see don’t know how much this mentality hurts them.

Here’s why it’s a bad idea to say yes to everything:

• Saying yes to everything takes you away from longer-term value creation

• Saying yes to everything dilutes focus and makes excellence more difficult to achieve

• Saying yes to everything spreads resources too thin instead of on what matters

• Saying yes to everything usually leads to missed deliverables & erodes trust

• Saying yes to everything encourages other stakeholders to drive your agenda

Saying yes to literally everything is clearly not the right strategy, but why do so many technology leaders take this approach anyway?

In my experience, here are the key reasons why technology leaders say yes too much:

• They think they are helping the business

• They feel like saying no would somehow let people down

• They are worried about their own job security

• They may have said yes in the past and now don’t want to appear silly by saying no

• They think saying no would make them appear uncommitted or even lazy

I’ve interviewed thousands of technology leaders and these are some of the most common thoughts they have when signing on to a new idea or proposal.

And it’s all legitimate.

These are really good reasons to say yes. Unfortunately, doing so harms leaders much more than it helps them or the business.

So, what’s the right approach?