Edu: Saying NO - A Courageous Act With Surprising Consequences

Episode 68: The Courage to Say No

Chris: I always see product managers, designers, engineering managers, CTOs, who know that they should say no, but they say it in such polite terms, in such professional terms, I can see why you want to do that, Mr. Ceo, Mrs. Board member, I want to be a team player and let me go away and scope that out for you, or let me have a think about that. Or here's how we might go about doing that. At the end of the day, someone has to say no. No. A hard no.

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Yaniv: And I'm Yaniv. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the essential act of saying, no, no, to your leadership, no to your customers, and no to distraction. it's one of those unknown superpowers that is really important and a startup.

 Chris, tell us why this is top of mind for you.

Chris: Yeah, that's right. Yaniv, you know, we've talked a lot about the symptoms of saying yes, too much and too often, right? everything is the priority all the time. There's a lack of polish, there's a lack of growth. there's a lack of self-serve understanding what to work on, in what order, and how.

And we've talked about. Solutions to this throughout the show, the 10 commandments of planning seven deadly sins of startups how to develop strategies and how to develop focus, and how to develop culture. We've even had a whole episode about the difference between traction and distraction, and it just occurred to me recently that.

Despite all that, you could spend days, weeks, months, building these decks, building consensus, building, culture, building, building, building, But at the end of the day, what it really comes down to is someone.

Somewhere saying, no. And that's what I wanted to talk about today, because unless someone, anyone. In the org chart, whether it's the board, the ceo, or down at the coalface, right?

The designers and engineers and QA people, unless someone somewhere in that hierarchy, ideally a group of people. say no. Then all that other stuff is for nothing. It's for naught. It's all theoretical, and that's what struck me the most in the last two weeks and what I thought we should talk about today.

Yaniv: I completely agree, and the word that comes to my mind when you talk about all this it's discipline, there are always new opportunities coming in, ? imagine you're on a road trip. you've drawn out a plan to get from A to B, and between A and B, there are beautiful lookouts. There are other places you can go.

There are nice places to stop and eat. but if you need to be at a particular place by a particular time, you've made a plan and you don't stick to it, you're not going to get there. Or at least it's gonna take you way longer to get there than you need to.

And again, with so many episodes in now, Chris, we talk so often about the importance of speed. So, why is no essential in all this? Because Someone needs to say, sure. that's an appealing roadside stop.

That's a nice opportunity. That could be a, good customer. But if we don't say no to it, then we're actually saying no to our plan. And someone needs to enforce that discipline within the organization or you will be unsuccessful.

Chris: Yeah, I want to, disagree with you slightly or I wanna disagree with you a lot actually. So

Yaniv: yeah. Okay. Let's go.

Chris: I think discipline is, Still a higher order abstraction There are these abstractions like planning and focus and discipline. what I wanted to get to today is the hard nub of it.

Discipline is a symptom of someone saying, fucking no, right? And what no takes is clarity of thinking. It requires personal conviction. And here's what it really is about. It's about courage.

Yaniv: Yes,

Chris: because here's the thing, I always see product managers, designers, engineering managers, CTOs, who know that they should say no, but they say it in such polite terms, in such professional terms, in such mixed language, with such equivocation, with such permeability,

And it's just like, I can see why you want to do that, Mr. Ceo, Mrs. Board member, I want to be a team player and let me go away and scope that out for you, or let me have a think about that. Or here's how we might go about doing that. It's gonna be a distraction and it might add this much time.

And, it's all of these gentle, professional, collegial things and. All of that is necessary. but at the end of the day, someone has to say no. No. A hard no.

Yaniv: First of all, I disagree that you're disagreeing with me, so take that. but, think you're right. It's about courage. You know, we had that episode a while ago with Jessy Wu about toxic niceness, if you'll remember. And, one of the interesting things about people and about the workplace is the stereotype is of.

Assholes and people yelling at each other and, that is what toxicity is. But it is far more common, far, far more common in the workplace for people to be too nice, for them to be too conformist, for them not wanting to call out that the emperor is not wearing any clothes, not wanting to give, good quality feedback.

And, you know, in that sort of radical candor, Quadrant, that's called ruinous empathy. Right? It's like you just don't wanna say the hard things. The other person always has a point, a perspective. There's some validity to it. So you don't say a hard no. You're like, oh, okay. Yeah. Like you said, you equivocate So the courage is to say, okay, I'm gonna bust out of this cycle of niceness and say what's actually important for the business. and that quite often is no. and here is, something where we might start to get a little bit disagree ish. But I think it's an interesting topic, which is someone might say legitimately It is not my. Position to say no. We all have our roles. We have some autonomy, but there's also a hierarchy. The buck stops with the ceo. If the CEO wants to go off on some crazy fishing expedition instead of doing what they should be doing, then, it's not my job to say, no ceo, you don't get that.

But here's what's interesting. I think I even mentioned this maybe In our previous episode, but we have a wonderful head of collections, Russell, who's working for us at Circular, and he introduced me to this term in debt collection, which is called Consequence Education, which I love cuz it's, kind of a little bit like saying threat, but it's so much more civilized and I kind of think that, okay.

Instead of saying no, when you might think, okay, it's not my role to say, no, you need to do some hard consequence education. You don't roll over. You say, we could do this. I think it's a bad idea if we do this. It comes at the expense of this other thing that we agreed to. It comes at the expense of a commitment we made.

It comes at the expense of a velocity on this project. So, yes, I will do it if that is really what you wanna do. But understand the decision you were making. Understand the consequences of this decision, rather than just saying hard, no.

Chris: Yeah. So here's the thing, I agree with you, right? I agree with you that this is the chain of very thoughtful things that you have to do, right? It's like, let's go up to the highest abstraction, figure out what our ultimate North star is, what our goals are, figure out what our principles are for the quarter, do all the planning.

And then when the rubber hits the road, you start doing what you're calling consequence education, where you're analyzing, the trade-offs in terms of velocity and cost and delay in time. But again, here's the nub of Yaniv, I have done all of these things.

I have seen operators do all of these things, and I've seen them burn days, weeks, and months doing these things. I have seen them get to consensus with the CEO, with their leader, the week before. then the week after, still again, that new priority, that new distraction, that new diffused focus creeps

back in. what I'm trying to say is this is a call to arms to be disagreeable, right? To say, I've spent enough on this analysis and this consequence education, and I'm done. It's a hard no, or at least I'm gonna be very clear with my no until, and unless you tell me do it anyway. The key thing is disagree and commit.

Yaniv: I was about to say that.

Chris: And what I'm not seeing is the disagreeing. What I'm seeing is, well, maybe we shouldn't, or remember, we discussed, what I wanna see more of is like that's off strategy. That is not what we agreed. I disagree with this.

This is a distraction and if you tell me to do it anyway. Then I'll do it anyway and I'll do my very best. I'm often as an advisor and even as an employee, I'm often the guy out on a limb saying, no. While everyone else is saying quietly, yeah, Chris, we agree with you, but not willing to put their ass on the line.

Yaniv: So I completely agree. I was gonna bring up disagree and commit, but the, failure here is not a failure to disagree. It's a failure to commit from the others, right? And so this is about discipline and perhaps it's about accountability. and I've been here, so, now this is where I, get fired up if a commitment is made.

Then those who make the commitment need to be held to it, right? You have a disagreement, you debate, you can have descending opinions. In the end, you make a commitment. We say we will follow this path. And at that point it's a bit of a sacred trust, right? You've made that commitment.

You don't get to back out of that commitment. And so if someone says, Hey, I know we agreed to do thing A, but actually let's just do thing B. Then that is a breaking of a commitment. And so when you talk about saying no, that's where I'm like, okay, that needs to be called out. Sure. In some technical sense, the CEO can break a commitment, but they've broken.

A really important thing, and in a sense, they're breaking the culture of their organization. So again, there's a consequence education. It's like, sure, you can break the commitment, but if you do it lightly, if you don't take your commitment seriously, then no one else will take their commitment seriously.

And what's that going to do? So the hard. Thing to say, and maybe it does come down to saying no. I know I'm taking this side here of like, don't use the word no, actually, I'm a big fan of the word no. and of standing up and of being disagreeable. but in this particular case, it comes down to saying, no, you don't get to break your commitments.

It's a really bad thing to do that it breaks our culture, and that is the bit that's unforgivable,

Chris: You're right. Actually it is kind of disagree and commit. On the other side of the equation, the person that keeps bringing in. the previous debate that keeps re-litigating the previous debate is the one that's failing to do the commit part. what I've been focused on in this episode is the disagree part.

Like someone has to disagree verbally and clearly and, without permeability, to declare it. False or to declare a disagreement. and you're right, the other person's disagreeing. But the problem is it's, so pernicious, subtle sometimes, and it's not just one person failing to commit.

It's like sales and marketing and the CEO, right? And this chief revenue officer who are all conspiring. And I say that term in a very, loosely defined way, right? They're not actually in a smoke-filled room, conspiring against product or engineering or whatever, but they're all defaulting back to their muscle memory, and they're making a series of.

Unconscious choices that need to be continuously called out. it becomes this kind of diffused energy against the previous path, the path that was, debated and set aside on the shelf the path of enter enterprise sales, of high touch support, of focusing on too many things, of saying yes to customer requests.

These things. are, subtle and they're diffused and they creep in like boiling water with a frog. And it becomes like, When did this happen?

How do we say no to that? How do we have a consequence education about a series of subtle and diffused forces that are pushing us in the wrong direction.

And again, the only thing I come back to is a bunch of, well-meaning people with clear eyes to say, Nope, not doing that.

Yaniv: We're not doing that. And this is why, because we said we weren't doing that. I think we're using the slightly different language for the same thing. To me, this, speaks of failure to commit and what you are describing as saying no is calling out that failure and saying, I am not.

Willing to comply with your failure to commit. it is counter to what we collectively agreed to, and it's not okay to run counter to what we collectively agreed to. So no, no, I'm not doing that now. would like to bring up, one of my favorite leadership books, which is the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and it talks about this pyramid of dysfunctions and it's completely related to this, right?

The bottom level is absence of trust between members of a team. The next level is, absence of conflict, that's the dysfunction, right? If you don't have the disagreement, if you don't debate things, then. You are inevitably going to get the next dysfunction, failure to commit.

And so there is another sort of nuts and bolts thing that I like to talk about, which is actually making commitments. Explicit, you have a meeting, you debate things, you agree on some stuff, write that shit down.

And then say, are we all comfortable at this point committing to this course of action? Because another thing that, makes it easy for this drift to happen where, nobody stands up to say no. Is everyone, sort of rman, right?

Everyone has a different memory of what we agreed to in that meeting. It's like, damn it, if you don't write it down, then everything gets lost in the midst of memory. And it's like, oh, I didn't ever commit to not doing enterprise sales. I was just like, blah, blah, blah. You've gotta write it down and use clear language.

Chris: It's so fascinating because the frustration that's brought us to this episode is, Cases where I have written it down, I'm advising the startup. We're walking through a kind of strategy deck. Slide two or three or four is assumptions. and then slide five is principles.

We have agreed that we're not gonna do any enterprise features for customers, or we're not gonna do contractual obligations for new builds. we are not gonna do this B2B part of a business because we're gonna focus on b2c and literally the next week there is, an hour in front of the whole team where I'm holding. Some members of management accountable to that decision.

And the rest of the team is still sitting there quietly trying to digest, rationalize, thoughtfully find a way to meet the needs of the leader who's still wanting to do it. there's, just a lack of backbone there.

There's a lack of courage there, or a lack of clarity of thinking whether you write the assumptions down or not. I'm gonna keep coming back to this. someone has to be in the room to say, Hey, see that on slide three, or see that on the confluence ? It has to be pointed out.

Yaniv: Writing things down is not sufficient, but it is necessary. Cuz if it's not written down, people will be like, oh, never committed to that. So they can't even be held accountable. But I've got an observation and I don't have an answer to this, but I think it's an interesting thing to discuss because like you, I'm often on the side of, we made a commitment. We need to stick to it. We need to keep our focus. And sometimes what happens is that is framed as, okay, this is the idealist versus the pragmatists, right? It's like, sure, we made this commitment, but like, this is the real world.

This opportunity came along. We need to hit our revenue targets, blah, blah, blah. and so it's like, sure. We agree to this thing, but that's abstract, right? This is, the real world. And in the real world of business and balance sheets and investors, then you need to compromise on those commitments a lot of the time.

and don't just stick to your guns for the sake of it. Like, I think that's often how the pushback to the pushback is presented.

Chris: I would say this is the primary. justification on the pushback. On the pushback.

Yaniv: and the pragmatist. Takes the high ground. Right. it's nearly like I'm an adult talking to a child or, I'm a grizzled old gray hair talking to an idealistic undergraduate. It's like, sure. it would be lovely if it was like that, but that's not the way the world works.

And it applies to so many things. our recent series of episodes around investors and finding the right investors and not compromising your principles, not killing your dreams for your investors. And even some of the feedback I got in that episode is like, that's great in theory, but this is the real world.

This is what investors want. They have power. We need their capital. We need to compromise, or we won't raise money. All of this, stop being so naive. Stop being. So idealistic.

Chris: Yeah, after 25 some years of being an operator and dealing with the real world, as an advisor, I have once or twice been accused. more than once or twice been accused of, oh, that's academic, right? Or that's idealistic, or, this is the real world, or we're unable to do that. And actually it happened recently as well where there was a pushback on, a customer wants us to do something which is off strategy for the startup I'm advising.

Immediately I said, this is off strategy. We need to find a way. To thoughtfully and respectfully, and completely push back on this. And the, pushback and the pushback is, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. We're not gonna do this. just urgent that we show them what this would look like.

And I'm like, right now it's urgent to show them what it looks like. Then it'll be urgent to scope it, then it'll be urgent to put it in the contract and then it'll be urgent to build it. this is a slippery slope of urgency. But let's go ahead and show them what it looks like. That's fine.

All of a sudden, two weeks later, it's now, oh, well we're not gonna do it unless they sign the contract. Of course. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. When did we go from We're not gonna do it to, we're gonna do it. Only if they sign the contract. Don't worry. And it's like there is a whole step in the middle there

Yaniv: But Chris, it's a million dollar contract. This is a key customer for us. It's a great logo. We can put it in our website. We can use 'em as a reference, so don't be so difficult. Of course, we made that commitment, but you're just, blindly applying a rule without understanding the context,

Chris: Right, and this is what the customer wants, Chris. and I'm like, but the customer is a child. The customer doesn't know what it wants. The customer is not in our business.

They don't know what product is, they dunno what scale is. They don't know what growth is. they don't understand what they're really doing in terms of fourth dimensional chess. They're just trying to solve a tactical problem. It's our job. To convince the customer to explain to the customer to do consequence education as you just described it, and I'm like, we have not even tried, we have not even had a discussion internally about the trade-offs that this new thing introduces into our business and into their business.

We haven't formulated an argument. We haven't explained to them why what they think they want is wrong as I, but they're not gonna change their mind. I'm like, how the fuck do you know? How do you know? You haven't even tried. You haven't even formulated an argument. And so again, I'm the only guy in the room saying no,

Yaniv: I think what, you and I are both advocates of and naturally tend towards is like, let's go through a process, define a strategy, a set of principles, write them down, collectively, commit to them, and then apply them.

With a lot of discipline we can just point to the commitment that we made. It's a no, it's a hard, no. We don't have to debate it. We don't have to discuss it. We don't have to go through the subtleties and nuances.

It's just a no. I find that great because it's like, okay, that's, the dividend, that's the payoff for all that careful strategizing and thinking is you get to apply simple rules at the end of it, but the pushback is like, okay, the world's always messier than that. are two different worldviews here, right? how do you bring them together?

Chris: You're saying there's a difference between principled decision making and dogmatism and stubbornness, there is tenacity, and then there's naivete, right? There is, principles, and then there's dogmatism and I agree with you 100% of course, but what I'm describing here is.

Folding like a house of cards, the moment a customer says, no, I want this. And the sales team, the support team, the ops team, the product team, the CEO going, oh, I guess we're gonna do that. It's just like, wait a second. What happened to looking at it through the principles? What happened to the analysis?

What happened to trying to formulate a thoughtful objection? What happened to trying to float the objection with the customer? What happened to passing on the customer and coming back later? What happened to what happened? What happened? Right? What happened? so I'm not, talking about dogmatism.

I'm talking about. like, this is pragmatism. This is not idealism, right? This is, the hard work of execution in line with strategy.

Yaniv: it's discipline. I do think that's right. Like, is courage and discipline, you know, there's that, marshmallow test, that famous psychological experiment on young children and, you know, if, they could have enough self-discipline not to grab the marshmallow that's in front of them, they get two marshmallows at the end.

Anyway, it's a slightly controversial study in terms of reproducibility, like a lot of studies in the field, but I think it's, become famous because it's just such a nice metaphor, right. And. In a way, what we're talking about here is the marshmallow tests for adults in your startup, right?

It's like, okay, you've agreed. we've got the strategy because we think the long-term payoff will be higher, We're not making these choices just for shits and giggles or just for aesthetic reasons. We're making these choice because we think they're strategically right for our startup, but then a marshmallow comes along, It's a deal or it's a new opportunity, or something that prompts a desire to stray from the path. Do you take the marshmallow and what you're saying is someone has to say no. Someone has to say Leave that marshmallow the fuck alone, because if we take that marshmallow, we're not gonna get two marshmallows tomorrow.

We're gonna get zero marshmallows tomorrow because we've allowed ourselves to compromise on our strategy that we so carefully and thoughtfully agreed.

Chris: Here's part of the reason why I think the marshmallow, gets eaten

Yaniv: It's delicious

Chris: it's delicious,

Yaniv: it's there. It's in front of you.

Chris: Right. And, it's also shit rolls downhill. So it's the person whose job it is to deal with the no. Who is abating their job and saying, well, it would be easier if we just said yes, the CEO's job is easier if the r and d team, built the B2B product so they can get revenue and not have to go raise money. it's easier to get the engineering team to just build it than to risk a performance review. I'm just gonna push the shit downhill. Instead of taking accountability and apply back pressure, back up the chain and risk my own job, which is why it comes back to courage and grit and, the willingness to do the hard work to apply that back pressure.

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Yaniv: The things I'm now thinking about are culture and in incentives. Courage is not scalable. you can have people who do exceptional jobs in an unwelcoming culture, but that's not an excuse.

That's not a scalable strategy. If you want to have a successful organization in the long term, you need to have a great culture. And similarly, you need to have the right set of incentives. So the question is, what's the incentive structure that causes people to prioritize the short term over the long term?

What is the culture that doesn't reward people for courageous acts, for standing up for what is right? Because those are the things that you need to fix. And, have to admit, Google is complex organization. I've got complex feelings about it. but I found in my time there, whenever I demonstrated courage, I was rewarded for it.

And you know, part of being rewarded for it is simply not being punished. the Speaker of Uncomfortable Truths, the, Poker of the head above the parapet. The person who says no, they can easily be punished by a lot of organizations. At Google, I was rewarded, and by that I mean I was celebrated.

I was taken more seriously Over time, it. Worked in my favor from a career and credibility point of view. I had a lot of uncomfortable moments. It wasn't always welcomed in the moment when I showed courage, but eventually the people I was working with, the culture was strong enough.

The people were smart enough and generous enough to see that what I was doing, I was doing for the right reasons. And they came round. And I had a few times where that happened, but imagine if you show courage and you just get shut down. You are not gonna show courage again.

Chris: I 100% agree with you that, ultimately this is a culture problem, an incentives problem. And, in fact, few times when I've bumped into this in companies, I have advised the CEO to go back all the way to the top of the stack. And start rethinking the culture, rethinking performance, and rethinking the rubrics for job descriptions.

As you were talking though, I was reminded of a devil's advocate argument here, a true devil's advocate argument There's dogmatism you do not want to be dogmatic. There's idealism. You don't want to be disconnected from reality. Although I think that's an accusation, against the person saying no.

But it's often a straw man or a false argument and, needs to be watched out for. But I think the, third devil's Advocate here that we have to watch out for is What I often think of is the archetypal engineer who's gruff and cynical, and it's hard to convince them of anything.

And I often, often will see cynicism used as a substitute for true insight. there's this saying of like the person. Who says no most often is kind of creating power for themselves cuz they're the ones you have to convince in every discussion in every room.

And this guy is usually just a pain in the fucking ass, right? he's just a perennial cynic and that's a problem. and I want to be careful in this episode. I am not advocating cynicism as substitute for insight. I'm not advocating for somebody to always sit in the corner and have to be the one who's convinced I am. And I encourage people to be fundamentally optimistic and fundamentally collaborative and collegial and bet on the come what I'm saying is to say no. From actually a place of optimism, which is that thing that we agreed to, that thing we committed to, that ideal, that principle that we set out to achieve.

I'm saying no to this other compromise because of my idealism versus saying no to everything because of my cynicism. And I think that's maybe comes down to intent. It comes down to, the sponsoring thoughts behind the no. But you wanna watch out for people who say no. By default versus people who say no because of optimism.

For the commitment that was already made,

Yaniv: Absolutely true. And again, going one step up, that five dysfunctions of a team after, failure to commit is Lack of accountability, what we're actually talking about here, and again, it's not always about saying no, it's about accountability. If we've committed to something, we need to be accountable to our results and to keeping to that commitment rather than doing whatever the hell we like and, keeping each other accountable.

Again, it's in culture and it requires courage to do it. It's not comfortable. It is easier not to hold someone accountable than to hold them accountable, especially. If they don't report to you, if they're a peer or a, I don't like the word superior, but I don't think we have another one in their language.

Someone above you in the reporting chain, holding them accountable is uncomfortable. It requires courage. It requires a culture that supports it. but that's what you're actually doing when you're saying no here. You're not being a curmudgeon. You're saying, Hey, we agree to something. I'm gonna hold you accountable as I hold myself accountable and everyone else for the commitment that we made to each other to do this thing.

Chris: And like all things, this is ultimately an art. It's ultimately about balance. It's ultimately about, holding yourself accountable, to understand the line between being principled and being dogmatic. But in my experience, at least in cultures that are differential to authority and like Australia, Europe and so on, the problem is not.

The cynic who always says no. the problem is the collegial, conflict averse character that's gently trying to pussyfoot around a problem, but it's really, they should be saying a clearer no.

Yaniv: You're right. And if you think about the, countries where startups have been most successful, they tend to have cultures that are more disagreeable, more individualistic. and one could speculate that part of the reason for that is because people are more willing to stand up for what's right rather than focus On deference and on harmony within the group.

Chris: Now here, let's give a counter example. because again, I don't want this to be misconstrued as a, reason for dogmatism or cynicism. there's a, famous, or at least famous in my circles, example of this at Uber where, people. Travis specifically believed that Uber is a cashless service.

You get in, you're magically whisked away to where you're going, and then you get out and you don't fumble around with change. but, but the country lead for India Came to Travis and said, we're gonna need to do cash in India.

And he was like, no bloody way. That's off strategy, off our principles, off what Uber is. And she said, No. this is not the No I'm asking for, but she's like, you have to believe me. I run the country. I know what we need. I can make this work. Uber will not succeed in India without cash. And he's like, okay, you are the leader of Uber, India.

You're on the ground there. You know what you need to do? Get it done. And so this was a form of, you know, putting aside what felt like an essential principle for the company to win a market that at the time was, you know, massive and, and essential for the success of the company. And so, you know, there is definitely a time and space and reason to create exceptions to your principles. it is not at the first sign of a difficult conversation. It is after a thoughtful analysis and, serious justification and, execution.

Yaniv: Well, it's funny because one of the things I think about, and this applies to that concept of commitment more generally. Is that circumstances change as a startup. You learn new things, the market conditions change, you enter a new country, all sorts of things that can happen, or you know, an incredible business opportunity might come along.

That is off strategy. The circumstances have changed. And my position, and this is something that I tell my team, is that it's not that any of these things are set in stone. I like to say they're set in jelly, like they're set, but it's not a hard set. And what happens here is if you want to revisit, if you want to change your commitments, then you can do that.

But there need to be two things that are true. One is the circumstances have changed in some material way, and that can include we've learned something new. So, and then we need to have a discussion about the fact the circumstances have changed and perhaps review our previous commitments in light of the changed circumstances.

Chris: Explicitly

Yaniv: Explicitly, and that's, such a big part of it, right? you can't just be like, oh yes, things changed. So I changed my minds, so I just did this. It's like, no. We were like, we need to say, hey, we need to revisit these commitments. Like you need to use that language explicitly, and this is why, and.

Entering a new market is perfect. It's like, hey, the circumstances have changed. We're entering into a market that is a cash economy. So it's not actually that we're just sort of blindly ignoring our principles. It's that we are saying circumstances have changed and therefore we need to revisit them in light of that, and that is actually completely okay.

But what would not have been okay is if the head of Uber for India just went ahead and implemented cash and had never had that debate with Travis, that would not have been okay.

Chris: Yeah, that's right. And so this does come down to. clarity of thinking by the people down the chain and the courage to say no by those people who are having that shit rolling downhill. and it is about being explicit in all things, explicit about the commitments, explicit about the principles, and then explicit when the.

Facts on the ground have changed in material ways and explicit when you change your principles and your, goals that you can recalculate actions over time It's about finding the balance between being dogmatic or being religious about those principles and being, flexible enough that you are able to adapt changes on the ground.

And, these all could feel like, talking outta both sides of our mouths like, well, when does this happen? And how do you know? And, to a degree, It does require experience, it does require taste, it does require a clarity of thinking. but it also just requires, I think, people to be aware and awake and alive to these trade-offs, to these concerns.

Cuz I think most people are just, they're not aware of it. And this is not really just about startups, it's about any company, any bureaucracy where you could be anywhere in the bowels of the process. And you need to be aware of this and bring it to the attention of the people around you.

Yaniv: coming back to that point of culture, Chris, if you're not working somewhere where courage is rewarded, consider whether that is a good place to be working. that is not career advice. Oh, actually it is. It's absolutely career advice. your mileage may vary. Everyone has specific individual circumstances, but if you work at a place that doesn't reward.

Doing the right thing, then maybe you could try to find somewhere that does, okay. That, became quite a wide ranging conversation. We started with the power of No, , like with a lot of things, that's the tip of the iceberg. We explored all the things that go into a. High functioning organization where people can and will say no at the right times.

And, I hope folks listening, enjoyed going on that journey with us. this is really important. This is core to what it takes to have a high performing organization and with, without that, you will not be successful as a startup.

Chris: Yeah. And, if you want to go deeper on many of these subjects, right, of, great planning, of great organization, great execution. our back catalog has episodes that go deep into each one of these subjects, and I think this episode was really great to write, really bring it to a head and say, all of that is absolutely essential and, important.

And you've gotta be the final stand to defend and to do these things, so that it really works in your organization.

Yaniv: So Chris, if folks are listening and thinking, you know what? I need someone to help us get better at saying no in our organization, sticking to our principles, your bread and butter is helping organizations with this. You say you're often the person who does say no. So if people would like to bring that into their organization, how can they work with you?

Chris: Yeah, I'm often helping founders and companies come up with these cultural values, these principles in the first place, and coming up with these focus strategies. But then I'm also the guy in the room, day-to-day who's holding the team accountable. I. To the no to saying no. Remember that thing? We, debated that last week.

We're not doing that. let's have the courage to say that. No. and to avoid what I call strategy drift. So if you wanna learn more about that, feel free to check out chris sard.com/advisory. if you're a funded startup, I'd love to hear from you and let's work together.

Yaniv: Now the final thing. We always like to talk about is the Startup podcast packed. This podcast is freely available, but it's not free. If you've listened to more than a few episodes and gotten value from them, you've actually made a commitment, and that commitment is to help us find new listeners by following us in your listening app.

Leaving us a rating or review, shouting us out on social media and also ideally subscribing to us on YouTube. So thanks so much to all the many listeners who have already done that. if you are getting value and you haven't quite gotten around to it yet, I get it. Life's busy. Put a little note in your calendar, to just get this stuff done.

We're so grateful, and hopefully this will help new people find the startup podcast.

Chris: All right, ne, this has been fun as always. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Yaniv: A hundred percent. All right. See you Chris.

Chris: See you. Bye-bye.