Options over opportunity

Markus wrote an interesting piece on Optionality Magic.

It reminded me of a situation we faced with our digital unit a couple of years ago.

We were in a situation of financial struggle. As part of an agency, we had plenty (in fact too many) customers with too many small projects that in sum were non-profitable. The team and capabilities were built around what would be needed to build complex digital products not small-scale websites.

In discussions within the leadership, it became clear that we needed to address a different segment of customers that also reflected the path of future growth for the whole organization.

That in itself was a pretty straight-forward analysis and decision to make. What made it difficult were the decisions we needed to make on a day-to-day basis.

Because the unit was unprofitable it seemed necessary to accept more quick-cash projects. To keep the revenue up. To pay the salaries. This ultimately would have led to a problem. Saying yes to immediate project inquiries was detrimental to freeing capacities. We would not have enough capacity to accept the first ideal projects we wanted to target.

This meant we would need to say No to immediate revenue to possibly become more profitable in the future. Not hard to imagine how this would become difficult.

It took countless discussions, basically for every project inquiry. The higher the budget, the more difficult the decision.

What helped us was a communication routine we had established for the leadership team. Every week we came together to discuss how our daily business would work for or against our aspiriations. Reminding ourselves what we wanted to achieve eased the pains of these decisions.

This is not to say that we got it right every time. There were probably some more projects we should have said no to and some projects to say yes to, to ease the transition.

My take-away: It is hard to say No to imminent opportunity in hope for a possible future success. You need disciplined communication routines, helpful metrics and leadership that push back and remind themselves what option they actually want to realize.

— November 21, 2025