Creating A Culture For No

Recently over a phone call a frustrated colleague in the private sector bemoaned, “you would never take this contract, would you?!” and that is a compliment. It’s also a testament to our work on growth.

Saying no is hard. For so long the SJVCEO ran on a deficit.  Founded as a think tank for clean energy on the eve of The Great Recession led to an ethos of take whatever you can.  “Build the airplane while you learn to fly” was our old motto.  And to be fair, it worked.  But it resulted in taking whatever came our way.  Bad contracts, work that was too broad and misaligned to our goals.  Sacrificing respect in the name of keeping the peace. Of meeting payroll. 

For a decade we said yes.  And then we started saying no.

It wasn’t a seismic shift.  It was subtle. Much more a whimper than a bang to be sure.  For awhile there were still more yeses than nos. But after a decade of saying yes to everything we found our voice and politely said no.

Now, sure, there’s a debate that could be had about the responsibility of a private corporation versus that of a non-profit.  On why we can say no.  But understand the SJVCEO is a business, and it is a successful one. We’ve just gotten comfortable aligning our work with our values which has grown our success.

We’re able to do this, in large part, because of our team and creating a culture that allows for no.  By building a space for confidence and purpose and fun we take work that matches our new ethos.  We regularly review our intentions, our feelings, and our goals.  I’ve observed that far too often our counterparts in the private sector sacrifice the former two in favor of the later. Certainly, we all must deliver on our goals, but do we really have to sacrifice our values for the sake of a contract?

I say no.  

And so, we’re picky. 

We won’t take work that we know is set to fail, even if it pays well because we know that failure will reflect on our reputation.  We’ve bowed out of efforts that we think will exploit our communities and lost income as a result.  We push hard on poorly designed programs, on insincere program managers, on assholes. In work and in life we must protect our reputation for it’s our reputation that both precedes us and follows us.

And now we view success in terms of personal growth, retention, and fun.  We value our engagements through the quality of interaction over quantity of touches.  Our business has grown and our ability to invest in staff and resources has increased along with revenue. 

By learning to say no we opened up space for fun. By giving ourselves room to breathe we can run programs we’re proud of and promote partners we believe in.  When we got choosey about saying yes we hit our stride.

So, we say no now.  A lot. With confidence.  But when we say yes it’s with enthusiasm and total commitment!