Let no be your default

Why this rule exists

Every yes you give spends your team's finite capacity, and yeses are easy to hand out because the cost arrives later and lands on someone else's plate. A manager who says yes to keep the peace slowly buries their team under a pile of half-committed work, none of it done well. Saying no is how you protect the yeses that matter. It feels ungenerous in the moment and proves generous over the quarter, because focus is a gift you can only give by declining most of what asks for it.