Most leaders are pretty good at adding things. There’s always room for another initiative, another “important” meeting, or some new process or tech that’s supposed to make everyone’s life easier.
Before long, the organization is carrying far more than anyone intended, and very little ever gets taken off the table. Sound familiar?
Leaders aren’t nearly as good at subtraction. That’s why one of Warren Buffett’s most famous observations still deserves attention, although perhaps for a reason different from what we’ve been giving it.
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
I’ve written about this Buffett quote before, usually in the context of protecting your time and focusing on what matters. But there’s another leadership lesson buried inside it that becomes more important the higher you climb.
Every “yes” has a cost
When a CEO says yes to another priority, that decision doesn’t stay in the executive suite. It travels downstream.
Someone has to attend the meetings, create the deck, track the metrics, and somehow find room for the new initiative alongside everything else leadership approved last quarter and never officially killed.
Eventually, an organization can have 12 “top priorities,” which is corporate code for having no priorities at all.
Saying no is an allocation decision
This is where Buffett’s advice spells leadership discipline. Leadership is partly the job of deciding where those resources will not go.
Research on “initiative overload” found that companies struggle to kill projects even after they no longer support the strategy. Instead, executives keep adding initiatives, creating overload farther down the organization.
More recently, research found essentially the same problem. Many organizations know they have too many projects, yet still struggle to eliminate them, slowing execution and muddying strategic priorities.
I’ve seen a version of this in leadership work for years. Executives talk about focus while rewarding addition. Every new idea gets oxygen because nobody wants to be the person who kills something that might work. That’s not strategy. To me, that looks more like organizational hoarding.
Give your people permission to stop
Here’s a simple little leadership habit that can change the conversation. Every time your leadership team approves a significant new priority, ask: “What are we going to stop doing to make room for this?”
Don’t accept “we’ll figure it out” as an answer. If nothing comes off the table, you haven’t prioritized anything. You’ve simply increased the workload.
This becomes even more important when resources are tight. Research shows that when the workload keeps growing but resources don’t, leaders can’t keep asking people to do more with less. At some point, something has to come off the table.
The better question isn’t always, “How can we get more done?” Sometimes it’s, “Why are we still doing this?”
Have the leadership courage to disappoint people
There’s another reason saying no gets harder as leaders become more successful: More people want something from them. Customers, employees, investors, and partners believe they deserve attention. But you still can’t satisfy them all.
That means a CEO who refuses to disappoint anyone will eventually disappoint almost everyone, because the organization becomes stretched too thin to execute its best ideas exceptionally well.
Buffett’s wisdom, then, isn’t really about becoming someone who walks around saying no all day. It’s really about becoming clear enough about what matters that the answer to everything else becomes easier.
And sometimes the most strategic thing a leader can say is two letters long. No.
—Marcel Schwantes
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com.
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