Strategy is Choice: What We’re Saying ‘No’ to This Year

Every year, the pressure ramps up.

More channels. More tools. More “urgent” priorities. More AI. More stakeholders with genuinely good ideas.

And if we’re not careful, strategy turns into a polite form of collecting initiatives.

Here’s the truth I keep coming back to.

Strategy isn’t what you plan to do. Strategy is what you choose not to do.

Because saying yes is easy. It feels optimistic. It feels collaborative. It feels like progress.

But you don’t build momentum by agreeing with everything. You build it by making trade-offs on purpose.

So this year, we’re getting clearer on the “no’s”. Not because we’re negative. Because we’re serious about focus.

The ‘no’ list (the stuff we’re actively avoiding)

No to shiny work without a real customer problem. If we can’t name the customer pain it solves, we’re not doing it. “Interesting” isn’t enough. If the work doesn’t anchor back to a specific customer outcome, it becomes distraction dressed up as innovation.

No to AI for AI’s sake. AI is brilliant, but we’re not rolling out tools just because they’re new or because everyone else is doing it. If it doesn’t improve speed, quality, customer experience, or decision-making in a measurable way, it stays in the experiment bucket, not the operational one.

No to custom one-offs that don’t scale. Bespoke solutions can feel like great service in the moment, but they create hidden cost over time. Complexity accumulates. Teams slow down. Customers get an inconsistent experience. We’re choosing repeatable patterns and principles that scale, instead of heroic exceptions.

No to ‘busy’ metrics. Vanity numbers are comforting. Activity dashboards look impressive. But we’re prioritising measures that reflect real progress. Customer impact, commercial outcomes, trust, retention, time-to-value. If the metric only proves we were active, it’s not the one we’ll optimise for.

No to meetings that could be a decision. If a meeting exists because we’re avoiding a call, that’s a signal. We’re moving more decisions into writing, tightening the brief, and only meeting when it genuinely changes the outcome. Less noise. More clarity. Faster movement.

What we’re protecting (because this is the point)

We’re protecting focus, so the team can do fewer things better and actually finish what we start. Nothing builds credibility like follow-through.

We’re protecting quality, because good work compounds and poor work creates rework. Quality is not a “nice to have”. It’s how momentum becomes sustainable.

We’re protecting energy, because burn-out is not a badge. A tired team makes short-term decisions. A healthy team makes better ones.

We’re protecting trust, because customers feel inconsistency instantly. When priorities swing, quality slips. When quality slips, trust erodes. Trust is a long game, and it’s expensive to rebuild.

And we’re protecting momentum, because priorities only work when they’re real. Real priorities have trade-offs. Real priorities have a no list.

A quick test we’re using

Before we say yes, we ask: What problem are we solving, for whom? What would we stop doing to make this possible? If we do this, what gets worse? How will we know it worked?

If we can’t answer those clearly, it’s not ready for a yes.

Your turn

If you’re leading a team this year, I’d encourage one simple move: write your “no list” down. Share it. Repeat it.

Because the world will always offer more options than you can pursue. The leaders who win are the ones who choose with intent.

What are you saying no to this year so you can say yes to what matters?