Sam Decker, at Decker Marketing, gives a good tutorial at the beginning of 2006. Actually 12 of them for us to work on them every month to arhieve one goal – what to say ‘No’. Actually, I found saying ‘No’ is hard, especially when I have just started working. Throughout my career, I found out there are some places I need to learn saying ‘No’ to stay productive and focus.
Sam describes 12 areas in business that we should be choosing which are not in our priority and focus and we should reject them:
- What strategies, initiatives and activities will you say “no” to?
- What measurements will you ignore?
- What customers will you not target?
- What relationships will you not keep?
- What competitors will you not follow?
- What will you remove from your web site?
- What money will you not spend?
- What meetings will you decline?
- What trips will you not make?
- What slides will you not create?
- What will you not say?
- What thoughts will you not entertain?
With some examples and descriptions, those points area valuable as a guideline to check. I enjoy this quote from the article: “We need to say “no”, but we’re not very good at it. In business we give it another name… “prioritization” or “strategic planning”.”
“prioritization” or “strategic planning” means “no”. How true.
Strategic Plan for 2006 — 12 Places to Say No – [Decker Marketing]
