The Power of No

I've been thinking about Michael Porter's quote lately: "The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." It hit me during a particularly manic week when I'd said yes to about five things too many, and was feeling that familiar overwhelm creeping in.

Porter wasn't just dropping business school wisdom when he said this. He was naming something many of us struggle with daily. Our diaries fill up with commitments, our organisations pile on initiatives, and somehow we've convinced ourselves that strategic brilliance means doing more things rather than the right things.

The irony isn't lost on me. I've spent years talking about innovation and ideas, yet sometimes the best innovation is elimination - working out what to chuck overboard so your ship doesn't sink.

We see this everywhere, don't we? Schools take on every new educational initiative until teachers are buried in paperwork. Businesses chase every market trend until their core proposition gets diluted beyond recognition. Even our personal lives get cluttered with commitments that seem important in the moment but collectively drain our energy and focus.

What I find particularly interesting is that this challenge crosses sectors and industries. Whether you're running a tech startup or managing an NHS trust, the fundamental problem remains: too many potentially worthwhile things to do, and not enough resources to do them all well.

I want to explore why saying no might be the most valuable strategic skill we'll ever develop. Not because it's trendy to talk about minimalism or focus (although lots of people are doing it, me included!), but because understanding what to eliminate might be the only sustainable competitive advantage in a world where everyone's trying to do too much.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Paradox of Choice - Why more options lead to worse decisions

More than once, I have opened Netflix, scrolled for 20 minutes, and ended up watching nothing at all. That's not just me being indecisive - it's my brain drowning in options.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this the ‘paradox of choice’. His research shows that while we instinctively crave options, having too many actually paralyses us. When Schwartz and his colleagues set up a jam-tasting booth at a posh food market, they found something counterintuitive: when they offered 24 varieties of jam, only 3% of browsers actually bought any. When they reduced the selection to just six jams, purchases shot up to 30%. Less choice led to more action.

“Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.” Barry Schwartz

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This isn't just about jam or Netflix. The same principle applies to our organisations and careers. I was chatting with a headteacher recently who described her school's improvement plan as "a Christmas tree with too many baubles". Every initiative seemed valuable in isolation, but collectively they were weighing down the branches until the whole tree risked toppling over.

What's going on here? When we face too many choices, several psychological mechanisms kick in. Decision fatigue sets in as our mental energy depletes with each choice we make. Analysis paralysis takes hold as we worry about making the wrong decision. And perhaps most perniciously, opportunity cost looms large—the nagging awareness that saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else.

This paradox only intensifies as we climb the ladder. The more successful we become, the more opportunities come our way, and the harder strategic elimination becomes. As Warren Buffett puts it: 

"The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything." Warren Buffett

I've seen this play out in my own consultancy work. The organisations that struggle most aren't those with too few opportunities - they're the ones trying to pursue too many good ideas simultaneously. One manufacturing firm I worked with had 27 "strategic priorities" for the year. Twenty-seven! When I asked which were truly essential, the leadership team couldn't agree on narrowing the list. No surprise that by year-end, they'd made minimal progress on all fronts. 

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of a priority is “something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives”. 

The paradox extends beyond business. Our education system often values breadth over depth, pushing students to maintain a dizzying array of subjects and extracurriculars rather than developing true mastery in fewer areas. Our healthcare trusts launch initiative after initiative without retiring outdated programmes. Even our personal development gets caught in this trap - we buy another self-help book before finishing the last one. (I say “we” but…).

The problem isn't that we lack information about what works. It's that we lack the discipline to focus - to embrace the liberating constraint of fewer, better choices. And that's the first step toward strategic clarity: recognising that more options typically lead to worse outcomes, not better ones.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ I heard someone say that we don’t have information overload, we have filter failure. That resonated.

Strategic Elimination - How great strategists prioritise through elimination, not addition

I want you to think about the last time you had to make a tough strategic choice. Did you start by asking: "What else should we be doing?" or "What should we stop doing?". I'd bet good money it was the former. We're addicted to addition. 

When Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy in 1997, Steve Jobs didn't sweep in with a dozen new product lines. Instead, he ruthlessly eliminated 70% of Apple's products to focus on just four. He drew a simple quadrant on a whiteboard: consumer and professional, desktop and portable. Four products, full stop. The result? One of the greatest corporate turnarounds in history.

This isn't about becoming minimalist for its own sake. It's about understanding that strategic excellence comes through subtraction more often than addition. As sculptor Michelangelo supposedly said about creating his David statue: "I simply removed everything that wasn't David". Great strategy works the same way.

Look at Aldi, one of Britain's fastest-growing supermarkets over the past decade. While Tesco stocks about 40,000 products, Aldi offers fewer than 2,000 (despite that middle aisle!). This isn't a limitation - it's their strategic advantage. Fewer products means simpler operations, better buying power, lower prices, and a less overwhelming shopping experience.

Even the British military understands this principle. The SAS selection process isn't primarily about testing what candidates can do - it's about finding out what they won't give up on when everything in them wants to quit. It's a process of elimination that identifies the few with the right psychological qualities from the many who have technical skills.

Isaiah Berlin's concept of the hedgehog and the fox provides a useful lens here - something I talked about in November 2024 in Frogs, Birds, Hedgehogs, Foxes and Gameboys - but definitely worth repeating here. Based on the ancient Greek saying "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing", Berlin divided thinkers into two categories: foxes who draw on many experiences and hedgehogs who view the world through a single defining idea. While both have their place, research suggests that ‘hedgehog’ organisations - those with a singular focus - often outperform their more scattered competitors.

I've witnessed this dynamic in schools as well. The most improved schools I've worked with didn't pile on new initiatives - they eliminated distractions to focus intensely on a few fundamental priorities. One headteacher I know posted a "stop doing" list in the staff room that was twice as long as the "start doing" list. The message was clear: creating space is a prerequisite for meaningful change.

Even Warren Buffett, one of history's most successful investors, operates through elimination. His business partner Charlie Munger revealed their approach: "We have three baskets: in, out, and too tough... We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the 'too tough' basket". Most investment opportunities - even attractive ones - end up in the "too tough" or "out" baskets. The challenge, of course, is that elimination feels like loss. Our brains are wired to accumulate, not relinquish. But true strategic thinking requires us to overcome this impulse and recognise that power often comes from what we choose to abandon, not what we choose to pursue.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Before Simon Sinek wrote his seminal book, Start With Why (one which I have read more than once and recommended countless times), he wasn’t making millions as a global speaker. He was working day rates, hourly work but he stopped to reflect on what he wanted to do. It was in this time of pause that he asked himself “what are people not paying enough attention to?”. He developed his ‘Golden Circle’ and ‘Start with Why’ frameworks in this time of pause and reflection. It was a stop that helped him start. 

He realised the cost of yes by pausing. He went from doing lots to doing less (which ended up being lots of what he wanted in the end!)

The Cost of Yes - Exploring the hidden expense of saying yes to everything

When you say yes to something, what are you actually agreeing to? More than you think.

Every yes carries hidden costs that rarely show up on balance sheets or project plans. There's the obvious time and resources you'll commit, but the real expense goes deeper. Each commitment steals bandwidth from your existing priorities, diffuses your focus, and adds complexity to your organisation.

Let's talk about opportunity cost - that economics concept many of us learned and promptly ignored when making decisions. Every time you say yes to a project, you're simultaneously saying no to countless alternatives. When a school takes on another curriculum initiative, it's sacrificing time that could be spent deepening existing programmes. When a charity launches another improvement drive without retiring old ones, it's diluting the attention of already-stretched staff.

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Peter Drucker

Yet our organisations are filled with people doing precisely what Drucker said - efficiently executing tasks that don't align with core priorities.

I witnessed this firsthand in a council that prided itself on never saying no to community requests. Admirable in theory, catastrophic in practice. Staff were drowning in low-impact activities while strategic priorities languished. When the true cost of their "customer-first" approach was calculated - including staff burnout, strategic drift, and delayed high-impact projects - the price of saying yes became painfully clear.

The cognitive load of managing multiple commitments creates another hidden cost. Our brains aren't wired for multitasking, despite what our CV might claim. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman's work shows that attention is a zero-sum game - focus given to one task necessarily comes at the expense of another. The mental switching cost as we jump between projects creates a productivity tax estimated at up to 40% of our effective working time.

“The often-used phrase “pay attention” is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.” Daniel Kahneman

In many areas, this phenomenon manifests as ‘initiative fatigue’ - where staff become cynical about new programmes because they've seen so many come and go without proper implementation. It could be described as ‘corporate ADHD’, a chronic inability to sustain focus long enough for meaningful change. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I like this a lot and will explore this further in future articles!

Perhaps most insidious is what Greg McKeown calls the “clarity paradox" in his book Essentialism. Success leads to more opportunities, which leads to diffused efforts, which undermines the focus that led to success in the first place. It's a vicious cycle that turns initial success into eventual mediocrity unless we actively resist it.

The lesson? ‘Yes’ is not free. Each commitment carries compounding costs that extend far beyond the obvious. True strategic thinking requires a clear-eyed view of these hidden expenses, and the courage to say no even when saying yes would be easier in the moment.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Decision Frameworks - Practical approaches to strategic elimination

If choosing what not to do is so important, why don't we teach it properly? Most strategic planning sessions still revolve around the question "What else should we do?" rather than "What should we stop doing?". We need better frameworks for elimination.

Let's start with Warren Buffett's "Two-List" method. The story goes that Buffett once asked his pilot to list his top 25 career goals. After the pilot carefully ranked them, Buffett asked: "What about these other 20 goals on your list?". The pilot replied they were still important but less urgent. Buffett's response was brutal: "Those 20 things you've now got to avoid at all costs. They're what distract you from success with your top 5".

This approach forces a discipline few of us naturally practise. It's not enough to identify what matters most; we must actively avoid what matters less.

For organisations, Richard Rumelt offers a framework in his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. He argues that effective strategy consists of three elements: a diagnosis of the challenge, a guiding policy for dealing with it, and a set of coherent actions. The coherence aspect is critical - it's about what you won't do as much as what you will. As Rumelt puts it, 

"The core of strategy is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with them." Richard Rumelt

Greg McKeown's "90% Rule" offers another practical tool: when evaluating an opportunity, score it from 0 to 100. Here's the twist though- anything that scores below 90 is automatically a no. This might seem extreme, but it acknowledges that most things that score 70 or 80 are still good opportunities that will distract you from the truly exceptional ones.

For day-to-day decisions, productivity expert David Allen suggests a simple two-minute rule: if something takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. For everything else, decide whether to delegate, defer or drop it. The key insight is that dropping - elimination - should be a conscious choice, not something that happens by default when we run out of time.

Derek Sivers offers perhaps the most clarifying test: "If it's not a hell yes, it's a no". This binary approach acknowledges that lukewarm commitments rarely produce extraordinary results.

The common thread across these frameworks? They all create structured space for elimination. They force us to make trade-offs explicit rather than implicit. And crucially, they acknowledge that what we choose not to do shapes our results as much as what we actively pursue.

Whatever framework you choose, the goal is the same: to move from reactive decision-making to proactive elimination. Because in a world of endless opportunities, the ability to strategically eliminate options may be your scarcest and most valuable resource.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Psychological Barriers - Why we struggle to say no despite knowing better

We know we should be more selective, yet we still take on too much. Why? The answer lies in the psychological barriers that make strategic elimination so devilishly difficult.

One of the most powerful is loss aversion, first identified by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Their research showed that we feel the pain of losses roughly twice as intensely as the pleasure of equivalent gains. Applied to strategy, this means saying no to an opportunity feels like a loss, even when it's the right choice. Every potential ‘yes’ not taken feels like something valuable slipping through our fingers.

I witnessed this viscerally with a regional charity that was spreading itself across twelve different service areas despite limited resources. When I suggested focusing on their three most effective programmes, the CEO physically winced. "But people depend on those services", she said. She wasn't wrong - but by trying to maintain everything, they were delivering mediocrity across the board. The prospect of withdrawing any service felt like abandonment, even though focus would have allowed them to serve more people more effectively.

Closely related is FOMO - fear of missing out. While often discussed in social contexts, FOMO powerfully shapes organisational decisions too. When competitors launch new products or enter new markets, the pressure to follow can be overwhelming. 

Another barrier is what psychologists call the ‘sunk cost fallacy’, our tendency to continue investing in something because of what we've already put into it, rather than its future prospects. The British government's continued commitment to HS2 despite ballooning costs offers a stark example. Strategic elimination requires the courage to acknowledge when further investment no longer makes sense, regardless of past commitments.

Status and ego create additional obstacles. Saying no can feel like admitting limitation, while saying yes signals capability and importance. "I'm too busy" has become a bizarre status symbol in professional circles. As philosopher Bertrand Russell observed in his essay In Praise of Idleness, we've developed a moral attachment to busyness that makes strategic elimination feel almost unethical.

There's also what Barry Schwartz calls "maximising" versus "satisficing". Maximisers seek the absolute best option, reviewing all possibilities before deciding. Satisficers accept "good enough" once their core criteria are met. While maximising sounds prudent, research shows it often leads to decision paralysis and lower satisfaction. Strategic elimination requires embracing satisficing - being willing to say "this is good enough" in some areas to excel in others.

Social pressure compounds these challenges. In many organisations, saying no is seen as negative, uncooperative or lacking ambition. I remember one business leader who prided himself on never saying no to the CEO - a recipe for strategic disaster disguised as loyalty.

Perhaps most fundamentally, elimination requires comfort with empty space. Much like a minimalist home needs comfort with blank walls, strategic elimination requires comfort with uncommitted time and resources. Yet in organisational life, resources left unfilled quickly get absorbed. That budget you saved by cancelling a project? It'll vanish if you don't protect it fiercely. I absolutely hate silence - physical, corporate or relational - I imagine many of you are similar.  

Overcoming these barriers requires both awareness and technique. Start by naming the psychological forces at work when you struggle to say no. Develop ‘templates’ for declining opportunities respectfully but firmly. Create decision criteria before opportunities arise, making it easier to evaluate them objectively. And perhaps most importantly, recognise that these barriers affect everyone - awareness is the first step toward overcoming them.

Because until we address the psychological barriers to elimination, Porter's wisdom about choosing what not to do will remain more admired than practised.​​​​​​​​​​​

5 Practical Principles for Strategic Elimination

1. Institute a ‘One In, One Out’ Rule - For every new initiative, project or commitment you accept, identify something of equivalent size to eliminate. This creates a natural constraint that prevents strategic drift and forces honest prioritisation conversations.

2. Schedule Regular Elimination Reviews - Set regular calendar appointments specifically to review what you can stop doing, not just what to start. Ask: "If we weren't already doing this, would we start it today?". If the answer is no, it's a candidate for elimination.

3. Apply the "Hell Yes or No" Test - When evaluating opportunities, anything that doesn't generate genuine enthusiasm (a "hell yes") should be declined. Lukewarm commitments rarely yield exceptional results and invariably consume more resources than anticipated.

4. Create a Stop Doing List - Most of us maintain to-do lists, but few document what we're deliberately not doing. A visible stop doing list serves as a powerful reminder of your strategic boundaries and prevents eliminated activities from creeping back in.

5. Normalise Strategic Pauses - Before making significant commitments, institute a mandatory 24-hour pause. This creates space for reflection and helps overcome the psychological pressure to decide immediately. The best strategic eliminations often happen during these intentional pauses.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Porter's insight about choosing what not to do isn't just useful strategic advice - it may be the only sustainable competitive advantage in a world where options multiply daily. While competitors frantically chase every opportunity, the strategist who masters elimination creates space for excellence.

This principle works across domains. In education, the schools that resist chasing every new initiative create room for deep learning. In healthcare, the trusts that maintain focus deliver better patient outcomes. In business, companies with the discipline to maintain strategic boundaries consistently outperform those with scattered attention.

While competitors expanded menus and chased food trends, Wetherspoons’ founder Tim Martin maintained a ruthless focus on affordable drinks, simple food and efficient service. This clarity allowed Wetherspoons to scale to over 900 pubs while many competitors struggled. Their strategic restraint created operational simplicity that translated directly to competitive advantage.

The principle applies equally to public services. When former Education Secretary Michael Gove attempted too many simultaneous reforms, the system's capacity for change became overwhelmed. By contrast, the most successful transformation programmes often succeed precisely because they limit scope to create implementation bandwidth. The competitive advantage of strategic restraint operates at personal levels too. In a professional landscape where everyone seems chronically busy, the leader who maintains focus stands out. They deliver on commitments, think clearly, and sustain energy while others burn out trying to do too much.

Philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once apologised for writing a long letter, saying, "I would have written a shorter one but I did not have the time". Distillation takes effort. So does strategic elimination. But this effort creates clarity that generates disproportionate returns.

The good news? Strategic restraint is available to anyone with the courage to practise it. Elimination is entirely within our control. It requires no special resources, just disciplined thinking and the willingness to make difficult choices. Perhaps we need this wisdom now more than ever. Our organisations face unprecedented challenges - climate change, technological disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, financial complexity. Our natural response is to multiply initiatives, creating the illusion of comprehensive action. But the leaders and organisations that will thrive are those with the discipline to focus intensely on fewer, better choices.

Because in the end, Porter was right: the essence of strategy isn't what you choose to do. It's what you choose not to do. And in that seemingly simple insight lies what I believe to be the key to sustainable success in an unsustainably complicated world.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​