To say yes at the right time, pin every decision to your goals
gettyIn the European soccer world, we’re enjoying one of the most exciting times of the year. Christmas and Thanksgiving are nice, but nothing beats a good transfer window.
January marks the one period during the season when a team can change its trajectory by bringing in the right players. However, there’s a risk in this as well. With all that pressure and limited time, it’s easy to say yes to the wrong person for the job.
The soccer magazine FourFourTwo has a list of failed January signings, and it tells you all you need to know that somehow, Manchester United signing Alexis Sanchez is only the tenth worst signing on the list.
Of course, soccer clubs aren’t the only ones who say yes at the wrong time. This is a very common mistake in business as well. Business leaders become so accustomed to saying yes to every opportunity—every new customer, every project, every qualified job candidate—that they overwhelm themselves and strain their resources.
Eventually, they end up like all the teams on FourFourTwo’s list: setting themselves up for failure.
Too Much Yes Can Do Real Harm
Alexis was an undeniable failure at United, scoring only three goals over two seasons. And yet, no one can blame the team for saying yes to that transfer. At the time, he was considered one of the best forwards in the world. How do you say no to that?
The problem was that Alexis had been injured the season before the transfer and didn’t fit the United team. Still, no is always difficult in business, even in the best times. Business leaders feel, as Natasha Koifman, founder of NKPR, Inc., put it, “a pressure to say yes.” And this is all the harder when, as in United’s case, things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped.
As understandable as this impulse is, learning to say no is crucial if you want to protect your time and resources. Whether it’s a star player or a new client, limiting what gets a “yes” is key to long-term success. As Jodie Cook, founder of Coachvox AI, puts it, “High achievers set clear boundaries around their time and energy.”
‘No’ Is About Focus
The key to overcoming these poor decisions is focus. In my book, The Soccer of Success, I quote a favorite line from Steve Jobs: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundreds of other good ideas that exist. You have to pick carefully.”
To make sure you’re only saying yes at the right time, you have to pin every decision to your goals. In my previous post, I outlined how to set big goals for your organization and plan backward to set smaller goals you can achieve every year, quarter, month, week, day, and even hour.
This same goal structure can anchor all your major decisions. Will hiring that new person help you achieve your goals over the next year? Or do you lack enough work to afford them? Will this new project help you hit your targets for the next quarter? Or will they distract your resources?
Just taking a minute to refocus on how each decision impacts your goals can help avoid many poor calls. If United had taken a step back, they almost certainly would have passed on signing Alexis. Who knows how much progress they’d have made with better allocation of those resources?
The same is true for your organization. Reallocating resources from a poorly considered yes to areas that can truly impact your most important goals may be the difference between coming out on top and struggling with mediocrity for years.
