Knowing When to Say No to a Project
“No is a beautiful word, but you have to be the first one to say it.” — Hugo Pratt
Yet in the workplace, it is often one of the hardest words to say.
Saying no demonstrates something that naturally earns respect: protecting a situation—or preventing a problem—instead of simply trying to please everyone.
In several companies I have recently worked with, particularly in the engineering and civil engineering sectors, the same question kept coming up:
How can we manage an ever-growing number of projects? How do we prioritise them while still meeting deadlines?
Viewed individually, each project usually seems perfectly reasonable.
The real challenge appears when they are all considered together.
The same observations repeatedly emerge:
- More and more projects running simultaneously.
- No consolidated view of priorities or resource allocation.
- Employees under constant pressure to deliver without always feeling able to alert senior management about their actual workload.
- Resource conflicts that eventually become interpersonal conflicts.
A governance issue gradually turns into a people issue.
Bringing Different Perspectives Together
Without an overall view, nobody truly knows how many “balls are in the air” or when two projects will require the same people at the same time.
There is another challenge as well.
Launching a project is generally perceived as a positive and constructive act. It represents ambition, transformation and future value.
Conversely, delaying, suspending or cancelling a project often feels like failure.
Yet sometimes not doing something—or deciding to stop doing it—is exactly the right decision.
Saying No
Saying no also means taking the risk of disappointing others.
We all want to remain part of the team.
We want to be useful, reliable and appreciated.
So we say yes, even when we know that launching yet another project is risky and that the necessary resources simply aren’t available.
“It’ll work out, won’t it? We’re counting on you!”
So we try to fit square pegs into round holes, even if it means exhausting our teams and weakening projects that are already underway.
A yes brings immediate recognition.
The consequences of overload only become visible later.
Putting Every Project on the Table
When organisations suggest gathering every project together to compare and prioritise them, everyone usually agrees—in principle.
Until the moment comes to make real choices.
People readily question projects owned by other departments.
However, as soon as their own project is involved, the conversation becomes much more difficult.
Everyone knows the history of their project, the effort already invested, management expectations and the possible consequences of postponing it.
Everyone wants prioritisation.
Nobody wants to see their project move down the list.
The danger is confusing two very different questions:
- Is this project truly a strategic priority for the organisation?
- Or is it simply important for my own department?
One effective approach is to separate prioritisation decisions from operational responsibilities as much as possible.
The project sponsor remains accountable for the project’s value and success, while priority decisions are made by a cross-functional body such as senior management, a Portfolio Committee or a Project Management Office (PMO).
Another possibility is to ask each project to be challenged by a sponsor from another department.
Their role is not to replace the business owner, but to provide an independent perspective and ask the difficult questions.
The objective is simple:
no team should be the sole judge of the priority of its own projects.
So, What Should We Do?
First, place every project on the same table.
Understand what each one actually consumes:
time, skills, attention and management availability.
Then accept that delaying, suspending or even cancelling a project may be the right decision.
The objective is not simply to optimise resources.
It is to protect the expected value of projects—in terms of business impact, profitability and quality of work.
Learning Through Experience
During Nova Train programmes, participants are faced with several competing projects and limited resources.
They work on portfolio prioritisation, realistic workload planning and different Quality–Cost–Time trade-off scenarios.
Their mission is not to make everything fit.
Their mission is to choose—and to justify those choices using objective facts.
The courage of a project manager is not always measured by their ability to deliver every project.
Sometimes, true courage means saying:
“This project won’t succeed.
At least not under these conditions.”
