Why is your organisation busy, yet nothing important is moving?
A narrow wooden bridge over a fast-moving river in an old trading village. Every morning, traders approach from both sides carrying goods: bananas, goats, salt, clothes, fresh fruits, greens, and snacks, each convinced their load is urgent.
The bridge only allows one direction at a time, but no one wants to step back. They argue, they push, and some try to squeeze past each other. The bridge creaks, time passes, and then goods begin to fall into the river.
Then an old woman, carrying nothing but a small basket, quietly steps aside and sits on a rock. One by one, others begin to follow her example. The shouting stops, a rhythm forms, one side crosses, then the other, and trade resumes.
No one remembers the loudest trader. Everyone remembers the one who stepped back first. Discipline begins with saying No to the status quo.
Allow me to share an experience during a board facilitation assignment in Nairobi last year. It was 11:40 am, and the executive team had just presented a bold growth strategy: new markets, digital expansion, partnerships, cost optimisation; everything you would expect from a well-polished document. Impressive, comprehensive, but completely unrealistic.
And I posted my usual question: “What will you say no to?” You could feel the discomfort. The CEO adjusted his seat. One director started explaining priorities instead of answering the question. Another spoke about “balancing execution.” I smiled because I had done the same thing before, hiding behind complexity to avoid making hard choices.
Let me ask you directly, before you look away from this:
- Where in your organisation are people allowed to say no without being punished?
- Which initiatives should have been stopped six months ago but are still consuming capital?
- And what are you personally holding onto that no longer serves the strategy?
Most organisations confuse ambition with progress. They stack priorities like those traders on the bridge, believing that motion equals movement. It does not. It creates congestion, frustration, and quiet failure.
As a victim of this practice, I can say that weak teams add more work when results are slow. Strong teams remove work to restore focus. I once worked with a chief technology officer, CTO, who could not say no, and the results have been catastrophic. You need a CTO who can say no most of the time to good ideas so that a few that matter can be executed well.
In that Nairobi session, I introduced a tool I use when leaders are stuck. I call it the Strategic No Discipline. I am the primary user of this tool.
I asked each executive to do three things in real time.
- First, list every active initiative consuming time, budget, and leadership attention. No filtering. No politics. Just the truth.
- Second, force a ranking; what are the top three that truly drive strategic outcomes? Not active. Not visibility. Outcomes.
- Third, and this is where it becomes uncomfortable, publicly declare what must stop immediately to protect those top three. Not “reduce.” Not “review.” Stop.
The room shifted. One leader laughed nervously. Another said, “This will upset people.” That is leadership. Within an hour, they identified projects that had been running for over two years without clear returns. Sacred cows, legacy comforts, and political projects. And as they named them, something changed; energy returned, clarity emerged, and for the first time, the strategy felt executable.
Because discipline begins with saying no. Let me make this practical for you. When you apply this discipline, four things happen.
- You gain recognition and confidence because your leadership becomes clear and decisive, not crowded and confusing.
- Your teams accomplish more because they are no longer diluted across competing priorities.
- Your organisation delivers stronger results because capital and attention are aligned to what truly matters.
- And leadership becomes enjoyable again because you are no longer managing chaos disguised as ambition.
If you keep saying yes to everything, your strategy will fail quietly. If you learn to say no early and clearly, your strategy will begin to work. I learned this the hard way. Early in my career, I thought saying yes made me supportive. It only made me ineffective.
It took failure and a few painful boardroom moments to realise that leadership is not about being agreeable. It is about being accountable. Recently, as the founder of Twezi, I continued adding more features on the platform, and we gained no little traction. It has been bad until I got a new CTO who has the stamina to prioritize.
“A strategy is defined more by what you reject than what you accept.”
So, as you leave this, do not think about what you will add next quarter. Think about what you will stop this week. If you act on this, your organisation will move with speed and clarity. If you ignore it, you will remain busy, frustrated, and wondering why nothing significant changes.
Now take this into your next executive meeting and ask:
- What are we doing today that no longer deserves our time or capital?
- Where are we saying yes out of fear instead of conviction?
- Who in this room dares to step back so the organisation can move forward?
If you are serious about execution, then let us have a different kind of conversation.
Invite me to challenge your thinking through a Strategy Appropriateness Audit, a Strategy Execution and Culture Transformation review, or a Board Maturity Assessment and Strategic Briefing.
Not to add more ideas. But to help you remove what is quietly killing the ones that matter.
I remain, Mr Strategy
