There’s a peculiar delusion that afflicts middle and senior management across most organizations: the belief that saying “no” actually stops things from happening.
I see this play out constantly, as a fly on the wall in board and management meetings with our clients. A cross-departmental project gets proposed. The IT director says no. The operations manager says no. The finance lead says no. Then they sit back, satisfied they’ve protected their turf, completely oblivious to the fact that the project is still moving forward without them.
While this kind of protectionist, obstructive nonsense may have worked a few decades ago, corporate reality today is a very different cup of Joe. The old model where a well-placed “no” could genuinely kill an initiative died sometime around when we stopped using fax machines. Today’s organizations operate more like organic systems than mechanical hierarchies. Information flows around obstacles. Resources get reallocated. Priorities shift. And that project you refused to support? It’s happening anyway, just without your input. So maybe – just maybe – you should grow up, accept change, and stop acting like a baby.
“Be Like Water, My Friend”
When you say no to a project that has organizational momentum, the project sponsor doesn’t pack up and go home with their metaphorical tail between their legs. They do what they’re paid to do: they find another path. Maybe they go over your head to your boss, or even directly to the CEO. Maybe they reallocate budget from somewhere else. Maybe they hire consultants. Maybe they partner with a different department entirely. They’ll try whatever creative tactic they can think of until they strike gold, and the project moves forward. But where does that leave you? You’ve maximized both the cost to your organization and the disruption to your own department. You’ve turned yourself from a stakeholder into a victim. Well done!
I once watched an IT director spend six months refusing to support a customer data integration project. “We don’t have the resources,” he insisted. “It’s not a priority.” The marketing team eventually hired an external vendor to build the integration. Having to go around their own IT department cost the company three times more than it would have otherwise. And when the hastily-built system started causing database performance issues six months later, guess whose team got blamed for the problems?
The IT director thought he was protecting his department. Instead, he’d guaranteed maximum future headaches while surrendering any chance to influence how the work got done.
The Participation Paradox
Smart executives understand something counterintuitive: you gain more control by participating in projects you oppose than by refusing to engage with them at all. When you participate, even reluctantly, you get three things that matter.
First, you get information. You understand what’s really being proposed, when it’s happening, and how it might affect your operations.
Second, you get influence. Your expertise and concerns get factored into the planning.
Third, you get advance warning when things go south.
When you refuse to participate, you get none of these benefits while retaining full responsibility for dealing with the consequences. This isn’t about becoming a sycophant or abandoning your judgment. It’s about recognizing that organizational reality has shifted. The question isn’t whether you can stop projects you don’t like. The question is whether you’ll have any say in how they affect you.
The New Rules of Corporate Influence
Managers who thrive in modern organizations understand that influence comes from being useful, not from being obstructive. They’ve figured out that the best way to protect their interests is to help shape decisions rather than trying to prevent them.
Take procurement decisions as an example. The old-school approach was for department heads to jealously guard their vendor relationships and resist any standardization efforts. The smarter approach is to actively participate in vendor evaluation, making sure your requirements get heard and your preferred suppliers get fair consideration. You might not get everything you want, but you’ll get more than if you’d simply refused to engage. And you won’t get a reputation for being a PITA.
The same logic applies to many areas of business – technology implementations, process changes, organizational restructures, or strategic initiatives. Your choice isn’t between getting your way and not getting your way. Your choice is between having influence over the outcome and being surprised by it.
The reflexive “no” response comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern organizations work. Most managers still think in terms of departmental boundaries and resource competition. They see every request as a threat to their budget, their headcount, or their priorities. But organizations today are more like ecosystems than machines. They’re complex, interconnected systems where changes in one area ripple through everything else. The manager who thinks they can wall off their department and ignore broader organizational initiatives is like someone trying to manage their health while ignoring diet, exercise, and sleep. The interdependencies are too strong.
The other factor is simple fear of change. Saying yes to participation means accepting some uncertainty about outcomes. It means spending time on things that aren’t your immediate priorities. It means dealing with people and problems outside your comfort zone. Saying no feels safer, even when it’s strategically stupid.
The Information Advantage
Perhaps the biggest hidden cost of chronic resistance is information asymmetry. When you refuse to participate in cross-departmental initiatives, you operate with systematically worse information than your colleagues who engage. You miss the context behind decisions. You don’t understand the real priorities driving change. You can’t anticipate how shifting resources will affect your operations. Most damaging of all, you lose credibility with the people making those decisions.
At the same time, the managers who participate strategically build “organizational intelligence.” They understand not just what’s happening, but why it’s happening and where it’s likely to go next. This intelligence advantage compounds over time, making them more effective at everything from budget planning to talent management. It also makes them a darn site more valuable to the business.
Of course, not being (seen as) obstructive doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. Some projects that cross your path are clearly a pile of the proverbial – poorly conceived, under-resourced, or strategically questionable. But even when dealing with bad ideas, engagement beats obstruction.
When you participate in a project you think will fail, you get to influence how it fails. You can push for pilot programs instead of full rollouts. You can insist on clear success metrics and exit criteria. You can document your concerns and recommendations. Most importantly, you can position your department to minimize the damage when things go wrong.
When you simply refuse to participate, you lose all of these options while retaining all of the consequences. Doesn’t sound like much of a good deal to me.
The Career Implications
There’s also the career dimension to this that many managers miss. Since many organizations today have a much flatter, more networked organigram than they did in the past, your ability to work across departmental boundaries matters more than your ability to defend them. Managers who get promoted are the ones known for making things work, not for preventing things from happening. They’re the people other leaders turn to when facing complex, cross-functional challenges. They build reputations as problem-solvers, not problem-creators. In contrast the managers who default to “no” gradually find themselves excluded from important conversations. They become known as obstacles rather than assets. And in organizations that need to move quickly and adapt constantly, obstacles don’t tend to have long careers.
A Different Approach
The alternative to reflexive resistance isn’t reflexive agreement. It’s strategic engagement. When faced with a cross-departmental initiative, ask better questions. Instead of “How can I stop this?” ask “How can I influence this?” Instead of “What resources will this consume?” ask “What information will this provide?”
Most importantly, recognize that in modern organizations, the ability to say no effectively requires first saying yes strategically. You earn the right to refuse bad projects by participating constructively in good ones. You build the credibility to influence major decisions by engaging thoughtfully with minor ones. Executives who understand this shift will find themselves shaping their organizations’ futures. Those who don’t will find themselves shaped by decisions they had no part in making.
The choice, as they say, is yours. But choosing poorly has consequences that extend far beyond any individual project.