Expensive Yes

23 Aug, 2025

The easiest move for a manager is to say yes. Often, it’s also the costliest.

The hidden queue

In knowledge work, queues don’t sit on factory floors. They pile up invisibly — in inboxes, contracts awaiting review, features half-built. Because they’re unseen, managers underestimate them. A request lands, a project starts, a colleague asks for help. Saying yes feels incremental. Surely one more won’t make much difference.

But it does. Each extra item lengthens the wait for everything else. Delivery slows, stress builds, and costs ripple out to customers. The “cheap” yes isn’t cheap at all.

The maths

This isn’t just a hunch. Little’s Law makes the relationship clear:

Lead time = Work in Process ÷ Throughput

Think of a coffee shop. If one barista serves 30 drinks an hour and there are 15 drinks in the queue, the average wait is 30 minutes. Add five more orders without extra capacity and the average wait jumps to 40 minutes. The extra yes doesn’t just delay those five customers — it slows everyone.

Knowledge work is no different. Each new commitment stretches every other delivery already in progress.

Layers of cost

Individual: people working longer hours, carrying hidden stress.
Organisational: teams chasing local priorities, firefighting instead of improving flow.
Business: customers waiting longer, sales cycles dragging, reputation eroding.

These costs rarely trace back to the yes that triggered them. They surface later, detached, as if from nowhere.

Different instinct

Perfect WIP control is rare. Priorities shift, resources are constrained, politics intrude. But discipline starts with a habit: before saying yes, ask what it does to the queue. Is this the piece of work worth slowing everything else for?

Making WIP visible — contracts in review, invoices in flight, features in development — gives managers and teams a shared language for trade-offs. Suddenly the hidden queue is no longer invisible. The maths meets lived reality.

Mark of judgement

At heart, this is about leadership discipline. A generous yes feels easy in the moment. The harder move — and often the wiser one — is knowing when that yes is too expensive.

#flow #foundations