Best Yes Guide

As a leader, you cast the organization's vision, pace, and direction. You make a thousand decisions every hour, and decision fatigue is real. Each decision you make has implications beyond the initial yes or no.

I often refer to them as threads. Have you ever had a string on a shirt that starts really small, and you think you can casually wrap your finger around it and pull it to break the thread and get it over quickly? Did it happen that way, or did the thread continue to spin out of control and potentially break a few other threads that busted loose in the process? Leading a company or operation can feel a lot like that. What seems like a simple thread to manage soon unravels a slew of other decisions and projects. Before you know it, you’re sitting in a tangled mess, wondering how best to escape the predicament.

Does this sound familiar?

If so, I’ve been in your shoes. When I began leading an operation, my m.o. was to say yes to everything and figure it out later. I didn’t want to miss out on a great opportunity, a future partnership, or a way to generate revenue. I didn’t realize until six months later that I had significantly overcommitted. My team was exhausted and distracted. I had pulled them away from projects that would move the needle forward in our organization because I had said yes to lesser things. I was overwhelmed because I suddenly couldn’t honor my word to everyone, and that wrecked me mentally and emotionally.

I knew this couldn’t continue, so I created a guide to help me discern if something was worth my yes or if I needed to say no to it. I showed my team my decision-making tool as I asked for their forgiveness for putting us in that situation, and to my surprise, they asked for access to it, too. It became a tool we all referenced when unsure if a decision was our best yes or not.

This matrix, paired with an operational board that showed us our month-over-month priorities, helped us synch our best yeses and prioritize projects each month. Not only did it help streamline our operations, but it also created more efficiency and effectiveness in what we did say yes to.

A quote by Lysa Terkhurst says, “Not making a decision is actually making a decision. It’s the decision to stay the same.”

So how can you decide your best yeses?

I’m sharing this Discerning Your Best Yes guide for free.

Let's connect if you need help taking your operations to the next level! Leading doesn’t have to be so stressful; there is a better way.