IS A SIMPLE YES OR NO THAT SIMPLE?

On the last week of August 2023, I facilitated the AAXO Board strategy session for the 2^nd year in a row. This also included an induction of new members. I thank the AAXO Board for the opportunity and trusting me with this important work, especially the Chair Ms Devi Paulsen-Abbott.

One of the perks of doing this work for AAXO was being granted a lifetime associate membership of this prestigious association. As I considered myself to be a reformed accountant, I wondered what I would use the membership for, but God had and still has a plan. Since the first times facilitating their strategy session in August 2022, my company has run three very successful events, an industry that I knew nothing about before. Everything happens for a reason.

As an introduction to the session, we turned to the “Dean of Strategy for Guidance”: Michael Porter– “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”. To understand what is meant by choosing what not to do, we turned to Michael Bungay Stanier’s teachings:

The strategic question: If you are saying Yes to This, what are you saying No To?

• This is more complex than it sounds, to begin with, you are asking people to be clear and committed to their Yes.
• What exactly are you saying yes to?
• What could being fully committed to the idea look like?
• But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.
• There is the No of omission and No of commission.
• The first type of No (No of omission) applies to the options that are automatically eliminated by saying Yes. If you say Yes to this meeting, you are saying no to something happening at the same time. Understanding this type of No helps you understand the implications of the decisions.
• What will you say No to if you are truly saying yes to this.
• The 2^nd type of No is what you now need to say to make the Yes happen. It puts the light spotlight on how to create the space and focus, energy and resources that you will need to truly do that Yes.

You can use the 3P model to cover all the bases:

• Projects
  • What projects do you need to abandon or postpone?
  • What meetings will you no longer attend?
  • What resources do you need to divert to the yes?
• People
  • What expectations do you need to manage?
  • From what Drama Triangle dynamics will you extract yourself?
  • What relationships will you let wither?
• Patterns
  • What habits do you need to break?
  • What old stories or dated ambitions do you need to update?
  • What beliefs about yourself do you need to let go of?

This was particularly important as strategy session involved allocating roles and members needed to apply their minds to what it meant not only to accept their roles but even also what agreeing to be part of the Board meant.

This obviously applies to all areas in our lives where we give a Yes or No answer as per the few examples below:

• Yes to being a parent;
• Yes to marriage;
• Yes to a job;
• Yes to a leadership role;
• Yes to a community role;
• Yes to a political role;
• Yes to a political party on the ballot paper.

So my friends, I beseech you to be circumspect next time someone asks you to give them “a simple Yes or No answer”. Do consider whether an animal called “a simple Yes or No answer” does actually exist?

Slingsby Mda is a reformed accountant and the Managing Director of Esto Quod Es (Latin for Be Who/What You Are), a company that provides the following services:

1. Transformational Coaching;
2. Strategy Facilitation;
3. Impact Speaking; and
4. Financial and Project Management.