The Hardest Thing is Saying No

“No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.”

The first time I heard this Native American proverb I was sitting in an airport listening to a podcast before a flight to New Orleans. At the time, I must admit that I wasn’t paying a lot of attention because I don’t recall it doing anything but going in one ear and out the other. A few hours later, I arrived in New Orleans and was in the car headed to my first meeting, trying to figure out the right way to tell a group of executive stakeholders that a large project they wanted to do wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. As I was about 15 minutes away from the office, staring out at the New Orleans skyline, this proverb popped back into my head. As I arrived, signed in, and hopped in the elevator I kept hearing this proverb over and over again until it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t coming to tell this group of leaders their project wasn’t important, or their needs didn’t matter, I was coming to tell them that if we didn’t focus on other things first, their project wouldn’t have an opportunity to flourish. It wasn’t about shutting down an opportunity, it was about ensuring another one succeeded.

While I would love to say that I left that meeting to a standing ovation, with everyone sharing in the same lightbulb moment I had while I was in the elevator an hour earlier, nothing could be further…