Strategy is Saying No to Perfectly Good Things

This resource first appeared in issue #106 on 22 Jan 2022 and has tags Strategy: Other, Strategy: Prioritization

How to Write a Strategy Statement Your Team Will Actually Remember - Michael Porter, Nobl Academy
Saying “no” - Mike McQuaid

Porter’s article highlights an idea that’s come up a few times in the roundup - a very clear way to write out priorities or strategy is to contrast two things, both positive, and explicitly say that your strategy values one over the other. It’s too easy to write out “motherhood and apple pie” strategies: “we value moving fast and solid code”. But those statements are fluff that don’t mean anything; you might as well be announcing that water is wet. No one disagrees that those are good things with value. Hard decisions come when good things are in conflict. When writing a new chunk of solid code will require moving slowly, which one wins? Those choices are your priorities, the outlines of your strategy.

And once those choices are made, you have to start saying no to things that go against those choices. Last January (#56, #57, #58) we had a series on stopping doing things; the first step is saying “no”.

McQuaid talks about saying “no” as “frontloading disappointment”, and maybe surprisingly as a way of building and maintaining trust. He also talks about Brené Brown’s BRAVING framework for trust (Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Nonjudgement, Generosity). He writes that having a clear and explicit “API”, where it’s clear that if you say yes to something it’s going to get done, and that you say no early so they can move on, builds trust long term in exchange for a small bit of friction in the short term.