The ✨ magic ✨ of saying no to good ideas
“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 hundred other good ideas that there are.”
— Steve Jobs
When I first joined Intercom I did a “support day” where you worked in customer support for a few days to get you up to speed with the product and our customers. During that day I heard a lot of feedback from customers about ways that we could improve the inbox feature of our product. We weren’t investing in these opportunities at the time. I remember excitedly thinking I’d discovered a goldmine of good product opportunities that no one else had thought about.
I eagerly took my ideas to the VP of product, Paul Adams, and told him my insights and ideas. He calmly explained that he knew that these were potentially great ideas, but they weren’t the opportunities they had chosen to invest in.
I was confused. This was my first experience of saying no to good opportunities. I thought product was about determining whether an opportunity was good or bad, and finding a way to do all of the good things. It felt deeply uncomfortable to see opportunities and say no.
Since that moment early in my career, I’ve worked in a variety of environments - all the way from highly focused environments like Intercom, to environments where I’ve seen people trying to fit all the possible opportunities into one quarter using a scarily complex gantt chart.
Without exception, the ✨ magic ✨ comes from saying a clear no to an uncomfortable amount of great opportunities.
A clear no is not the same as putting a list of opportunities into a column that says “later”, “backlog” or “stretch goals”. A clear no is saying “we’re not going to put time into thinking about, scoping, designing or building that right now”.
That magic is working at such a pace that it will blow people away. That magic is happy, engaged, and motivated product teams that are able to pour their energy into creating products rather than managing backlogs. That magic is removing the stress that comes with excessive context switching. That magic is the moment that you see customers using the product that you’ve built and it’s solved a real life problem for them.
If you’re lucky enough to have been in this type of environment, you’ll know exactly what I mean when I describe it.
Putting this into practice
The single change you can make today is having a won’t do section in your OKR, goals or strategy doc. That list should include genuinely good ideas and ideas that could work out.
I have great business opportunities that I’m not letting myself put time into, so I can focus on a couple of things properly and give them my energy. It's painful whilst making those decisions, but I get to enjoy months full of focus.
If you’re in an environment where pushing back is hard and you feel like it would be impossible to suggest working on 1-2 things at a time, start small. Carve some space where your teams can work on a single thing at a time and show what you can do when you have focus. Work outwards from there, advocating for and finding more and more focus within your teams.
Deciding what to say no to
“More is lost by indecision than the wrong decision.”
— Marcus Cicero
Decision making is hard. All the books, podcasts and blog posts you read won’t tell you the right decisions for your product and your team. Including this blog post 😉
Lack of focus often comes from indecision. It can be easy to slip into indecision, especially when there are different views on priorities between your stakeholders. I’ve been there, it can feel easier to try and fit everything in rather than make a clear decision and disappoint people.
Indecision is the worst decision of all. You’ll end up over committed, stressed and disappointing customers and stakeholders. Remember that most decisions are reversible (understand the concept of two way doors) and you can react quickly if evidence tells you that it was the wrong decision.
Make the hard decision today, and benefit from the ✨ magic ✨ of that clear no.
