Jean Fahmy

As business leaders, the best decisions are often not the ones we say YES to, but rather the ones we decide to say NO to.

Passing on an opportunity is one of the hardest things an entrepreneur or a company has to do, but (imho) it is the single most differentiating factor in its success.

What follows is a result of experience, mistakes, books I read and some gray matter.

Knowing how and when to say NO requires :
- knowing yourself and your values
- knowing your business and its capacities
- being able to qualify and quantify the opportunity
- creating and adhering to a solid vision

Here are the questions I ask myself when analyzing an opportunity
- what is the exact need that this fills ? where do I position myself to that need ?
- how convincing is the solution to that need ? what are all the details ?
- how does this solution distinguish itself from all the others ? what are the barriers to entry ?
- what is the short and long term potential for the opportunity ? any upside to leveraging with current assets ?
- what are the risks involved ? what assumptions were made that include a measure of uncertainty ?
- is there a realistic execution plan of the strategy ?
- are all the necessary resources there to back up the opportunity ?
- is the team ready, willing and able ?

Things that can block an opportunity
- existing markets : our clients would not like it if we ...
- existing business models : we don't generate $ here with this method ...
- existing distributors : our distributors would not like it if we ...
- existing strategies : we decided way back when to do things this way ...
- existing structures : we don't want to manage this new opportunity in this department ...
- existing arbitrary constraints : if we don't generate this or create this or have this result his, it will be a complete waste of time ...
- existing vocabulary : we don't understand it ...

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