Say No

“Say No” Culture

People who cannot say No become a liability to an organization or community. For individuals to live cooperatively, information exchange is indispensable; those who cannot say No are, in that respect, negligent in communication. They prioritize their own emotions over accurately conveying the internal information they hold. In organizations where such individuals exist, the threshold for asking others for things rises. Cohesion declines, and in time the collective ceases to function as an organization.

To prevent this, it is necessary to normalize saying No within the organization and to cultivate a culture in which requests are made on the premise that one may be told No. This drastically reduces instances where information transfer becomes a bottleneck. Only when information has sufficiently propagated within an organization can that organization be regarded as a single entity.

By shaping a culture in which one can say No, you also raise the relative value of Yes. Eliminating “False Yes” leaves only “True Yes.” In other words, trust in words increases. Frankly, a Yes from someone who does not possess a No has no value; it carries no substantive meaning. That state is one of low informational purity in communication. Building a culture where people do not say No is tantamount to building a culture that continually exchanges zero-information.

Granted, language-based communication has limits, and expressing No is not psychologically easy. I am not insisting that every transmission of information be done verbally. It is ideal to be able to infer what the other person thinks, and that is a necessary communication style. But there are always limits. Miscommunication will inevitably occur, and the biggest problem is that there is no way to verify it. Therefore, when you are in a position to convey, you should convey; when you are in a position to ask, you should ask. What deserves emphasis in operating a community is minimizing those psychological costs as far as possible, not avoiding the issue.

If you answer Yes, you must cultivate a Yes mindset. Do not allow your words and the facts to diverge. That gap must never be tolerated. I, too, sometimes say Yes because I cannot bring myself to refuse, even when I truly dislike it. But once I have said it, I must accept it as a Yes. If you keep dragging along a No in your heart, you still lack sincerity toward your words. That is simply being a liar.

People who cannot say No are a burden, but people who cannot make it possible for others to say No are also harmful. In fact, the metric of how often you are refused is extremely useful in this sense; those who get told No are praiseworthy. This applies not only to being told No, but also to being corrected or told someone’s true feelings; it is possible because the two parties share that culture between them. In an organization where No does not exist, everyone bears responsibility.

Therefore, we must praise those who manage to say No, and we must commend those who are told No. The steady accumulation of such everyday acts fosters a Say No culture and builds a more robust community.