Yes and no might be the two most important words in the English language. They're certainly two of the most powerful.
Yes creates movement. It starts projects, approves agreements, makes commitments and sends us down paths that can sometimes be difficult to reverse.
No does something equally important. No creates space.
I've developed a simple rule over the years: If you need my yes right now, the answer is no.
That might sound stubborn, but it isn't intended to be. It's about recognizing that yes changes the status quo while no, at least temporarily, preserves it. If a decision doesn't actually need to be made immediately, pressure to make it immediately is usually a good reason to slow down.
Ask another question. Read another page. Talk to another person. Understand what happens next. Because no doesn't necessarily mean never.
Sometimes no means not yet. Sometimes it means I don't understand this well enough yet. And sometimes no is simply the beginning of the decision-making process. I didn't always appreciate that.
There's an old joke in the fire service that firefighters hate two things: The way things are right now and change. Like most good firehouse humor, it's funny because there's more than a little truth buried inside it.
As a younger firefighter, I regularly taught at the fire academy outside my normal shifts. I was constantly exposed to new techniques, equipment, research, and different ways of approaching old problems. Naturally, I'd bring those ideas back to the station.
I was definitely that annoying young firefighter always asking, "Why do we do it this way?"
Quite often, the answer was: "Because that's the way we've always done it."
I hated that answer. I still do.
Tradition can contain enormous wisdom, particularly in a profession where lessons have sometimes been learned through injury and loss. But tradition alone isn't an argument. Experience eventually taught me something my younger self didn't always appreciate, though. Sometimes the veteran firefighter saying no to my brilliant new idea knew something I didn't.
Maybe they'd tried something similar 20 years earlier. Maybe there was a consequence I hadn't considered. Maybe the technique worked beautifully on the training ground but created complications inside an actual burning building. Or maybe they really were just resistant to change.
The only way to discover which was true was to keep asking questions.
Years later, when I was elected to the city council and eventually became mayor, I encountered a remarkably similar dynamic. I had run for office because I wanted to get things done. I had ideas. I saw opportunities and things in my community that I believed could be better.
Then I encountered government.
"We can't do that."
"There's no money for that."
"That's going to create a problem."
"We've never done it that way."
No.
It could be incredibly frustrating.
I remember thinking: I wasn't elected to be told all the reasons something can't happen. I was elected to figure out how to make things happen.
Years later, I still believe some of that.
Government, like the fire service, can become too comfortable with the way things have always been done. Sometimes no becomes easier than doing the work necessary to discover a new yes. But I've also developed considerably more appreciation for the other side.
Government manages public money, employs people, maintains infrastructure, enters contracts and exercises enormous authority. Stability, institutional knowledge, process, and caution aren't obstacles to good government. They're part of good government.
Elected officials bring something different. They arrive with ideas, urgency, and a mandate from the people who elected them. That creates natural tension between those responsible for protecting an institution and those elected to move it. I've come to believe that tension isn't a flaw. It's necessary.
Get it out of balance and things get messy. An executive can push an organization until something breaks. A council can become disconnected from its community. Staff can protect an organization so effectively that it stops evolving. Elected officials can ignore legitimate concerns and mistake recklessness for leadership.
Friction isn't necessarily evidence that an organization is dysfunctional. Sometimes friction is evidence that the system is working. The question is whether that friction produces heat or movement.
I've been thinking about this while reading Chris Voss's “Never Split the Difference.” Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, dedicates an early chapter to an idea that immediately resonated with me: beware "yes" and master "no."
It reinforced something it took me years to understand. A negotiation isn't a battle. It's a process of discovery. The person across the table isn't necessarily my opponent. They're someone who knows something I don't. And I know something they don't.
The goal is to discover whether somewhere between those two sets of information is an answer neither of us could see when we entered the room.
Why do you need this? What problem are you actually trying to solve? What are you protecting? What am I missing? What can you live without? Those questions are more useful than, "How do I convince you?"
Somewhere along the way, I think we've also lost our appreciation for compromise. Particularly in politics, compromise is increasingly treated as weakness. Moving from your opening position supposedly means you lacked conviction. I don't believe that.
Sometimes it requires far more confidence to move from your opening position than to stubbornly defend it. Anyone can plant a flag. Leadership is figuring out how to get people somewhere.
Compromise doesn't mean abandoning your principles, and it doesn't mean lazily splitting every disagreement down the middle. If you want 10 and I want zero, five isn't automatically the answer. The work is discovering why you need ten and why I need zero. Maybe the answer is seven. Maybe it's two. Maybe it's something neither of us thought to put on the table.
The best compromises I've been part of often leave everyone wishing they'd gotten a little more. That's sometimes how you know you've found the sweet spot. Nobody got everything they wanted, but everybody got enough to move forward. The problem got smaller. The relationship survived. Collectively, we moved the needle.
That matters in government, workplaces, marriages, families, friendships and communities. Disagreement isn't inherently unhealthy. Friction can expose weaknesses in an idea. A thoughtful no can force a better question. The problem begins when winning the argument becomes more important than solving the problem.
I've learned not to fear no. And I've learned not to rush yes. Yes creates movement. No creates space. Leadership is knowing what to do with the space between them.
Because some of the best decisions I've ever been part of began with people sitting on opposite sides of a table saying no to each other.
Then we started asking why.
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Wayne Fournier is a firefighter, Thurston County commissioner and former mayor who has spent more than three decades working in public safety. His column appears in The Chronicle twice each month.
