The Hidden Cost of Yes

Focused water drop can break a stone given time — Chinese Wisdom

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1997, the company that he had once founded was 90 days away from bankruptcy. 

In order to compete with Microsoft and IBM, Apple had made the miscalculated decision to introduce a series of products that had left the company bloated. The Newton PDA and the Macintosh LC, which were not well received by customers and failed to sell.

Apple lost over $1 Billion, and were forced to lay off thousands of employees and close several facilities — but that was the same year that Steve Jobs made his return to Apple as CEO, the role he was fired from some years earlier with a new vision for the company. 

One of Jobs’ first goals as CEO was to review the company’s bloated product line. He asked his team of top managers, “Which ones do I tell my friends to buy?” When he didn’t get a simple answer, Jobs got to work reducing the number of Apple products by 80 percent. Jobs knew that only a handful of products were making profits. So, he retained those products and called for a halt on manufacturing the rest. 

From now on, Jobs’ strategy was to only produce four products: two desktops and two portable devices aimed at both consumers and professionals. For professionals, Apple created the Power Macintosh G3 desktop and the PowerBook G3 portable computer. For consumers, there was the iMac desktop and iBook portable computer.

Steve’s rationale for the drastic cuts was that if Apple continued the way it was going the total would be worth less than the parts, so he endeavoured to cut the fat and focus.

One year later, the company turned a $309 million profit.

Engineering Focus

“Really successful people say no to almost everything” — Warren Buffet

There is a hidden cost to giving the answer yes. Yes, creates obligations. When we say yes to things, we do not know exactly what it is we are committing to. Something that begins as a small, 30 minute investment each week, can quickly become 30 minutes a day and before you know it you are left asking — how did I get here?

The reason why we say yes is because saying no is hard. The term no typically carries negative connotations, evoking emotions of rejection and denial. But if your priority remains to make the best use of your time, then you will almost need to become accustomed to delivering a feeling of disappointment. 

But remember, people may end up far less disappointed with a no at the outset, than if you deliver a no down the line after you have given your word. So in a strange way you may be saving everyone’s time. This isn’t to say to decline every request you get. It’s to say don’t accept every offer that comes your way. 

No represents a preservation of focus. When I hear the word no, I hear ‘I am committed, just to something else.’ In order to do great work, you need a high level of focus. Anything that does not align with your ambition and vision for a particular set of goals, must be automatically met with a no. From experience, the most diligent people I have come across have carefully selected their priorities and been comfortable with dismissing the rest of their options as distractions. 

Saying no is easy when you aren’t particularly interested in what is being offered. But what happens when you are interested in an offer that you know you probably shouldn’t exercise? Here, we should turn to Warren Buffet’s 5/25 rule to help us figure out what we really want.

Warren Buffet approached his pilot Mike Flint, after realising that Mike had worked for him for the last 10 years saying “…the fact that you’re still working for me, tells me I am not doing my job.” Buffet asked Flint to map out his goals in a simple exercise that would change the way Flint viewed his priorities forever. 

Start with a broad range of 25 goals that you want to accomplish in the near future. Include everything. These goals could look span across — career, relationships or, health. The only handicap is that these goals must resonate profoundly with your life vision.

After archiving your top 25 goals, narrow these down to the top five. This part of the process is meant to be challenging, as it requires brutal honesty with oneself. However, it’s this process of selection that sets you up for the best decision making. 

Once your top five goals are identified, the next step is straight forward: ignore the rest. You now focus almost exclusively on these five top targets and put the other 20 on hold. Dedicate your time, energy, resources, and attention to achieving these five goals.

As harsh as it may be, this is what focus looks like. 

Raising the “Yes” bar

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. It’s true for companies, and it’s true for products — Steve Jobs

Focus is surgical. It’s something that must be carefully curated and be hard to disrupt. Focus comes at no cost, unless you perceive distractions as victories. So by having the courage to say no, you focus on depth and open your life up to boundless opportunities. 

People who respect your boundaries will understand your commitment to a project and if they don’t, then you will need to decide whether that relationship serves a strong enough purpose for you to adjust your operating system.

British Designer, Jony Ive, worked closely with Jobs at Apple and is largely responsible for the designs of the iMac, Power Mac G4 Cube, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and parts of the user interface of Apple’s mobile operating system iOS. In his 2014 interview with Vanity Fair, Ive detailed how Jobs would routinely ask him “How many things have you said no to?” Ive knew that what Steve was looking for was sacrifice. Ive often responded with things that he wasn’t remotely interested in doing anyway, which was besides the point. After Steve’s death, Ive reflected on these exchanges with this understanding: Focus is saying no to something that every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea. 

Near the end of his life, Jobs was visited at home by Larry Page, who was about to resume control of Google, the company he had cofounded. Even though their companies were feuding, Jobs was willing to give some advice. “The main thing I stressed was focus,” he recalled. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up, he told Page. “It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.” Page followed the advice. In January 2012 he told employees to focus on just a few priorities, such as Android and Google+, and to make them “beautiful,” the way Jobs would have done.

The difference between average results and exceptional ones lies in what you avoid. Focus on a few priorities and make the bar for yes, high.