I am staring at a screen that glows with the pale blue light of 37 unread messages from August 2017. My thumb stutters over the glass, scrolling through a conversation that never actually ended; it just evaporated into the humid ether of ‘maybe.’ We were planning a launch, or a dinner, or perhaps it was a revolution. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is the phrasing: “Should be fine,” followed by “Keep you posted,” followed by the ultimate assassin of momentum, “I’ll let you know closer to the time.” The digital ink is dry, but the frustration is fresh, a phantom limb of a project that died because nobody had the courage to say a flat, hard, honest ‘no.’ It is a specific kind of cowardice that masquerades as flexibility, and I am sitting here realizing I was just as guilty as the person on the other side of the bubble.

There is a peculiar weight to the thumb when it’s hovering over a ‘send’ button, knowing that the words being typed are a placeholder for a decision that hasn’t been made. We call it business courtesy. We tell ourselves we are being ‘easy to work with’ by not closing the door. In reality, we are just externalizing the cost of our indecision onto everyone else’s calendar. I remember Greta M.-C., a livestream moderator I worked with during a particularly chaotic tech summit. Greta has this way of looking at you-even through a grainy 107-pixel webcam-that makes you feel like she’s reading your search history. She was managing 17 different speakers for a single afternoon session, and 7 of them had given her that dreaded ‘tentative yes.’

Greta didn’t panic. She just started tapping her pen against the edge of her mahogany desk, a rhythmic 147 beats per minute that sounded like a ticking bomb. She knew what I was only starting to learn: a tentative yes is a lien on your sanity. It’s a ghost in the machine that prevents you from hiring a backup, from pivoting your strategy, or from simply getting a good night’s sleep. The vendor who tells you they ‘should be fine’ for a project 27 days away is actually telling you that they are waiting for a more lucrative offer to come in. They are holding your deadline hostage while they shop for a better ransom.

I’ve done it too. I’ve looked at a request and thought, ‘I don’t really want to do this, but if I say no now, they won’t ask me for the thing I actually do want to do later.’ So I offer a soft commitment. I offer a ‘let’s touch base next week.’ It’s a lie wrapped in a silk scarf. It’s a way of being ‘nice’ that is actually profoundly cruel because it prevents the other person from moving on. In the world of high-stakes events and physical builds, this ambiguity doesn’t just cause stress; it causes financial hemorrhaging. When the clarity finally arrives-usually about 47 hours before the doors open-the alternatives have vanished or tripled in price. You’re left paying an emergency rate of $777 for a service that should have cost a fraction of that, all because someone didn’t want to be the ‘bad guy’ who said no in the first week.

I remember walking through a convention center once, the air smelling of fresh sawdust and that weirdly ionized scent of 177 halogen bulbs heating up at once. It was 3:47 AM, and the floor was a graveyard of half-finished dreams. You could tell which exhibitors had partners who committed and which had partners who ‘tried their best.’ There’s a visible difference in the grain of the wood, the tension of the fabric, and the posture of the staff. The ones who worked with certainties were already sleeping in their hotel rooms. The ones who worked with ‘tentatives’ were duct-taping reality together.

In the South African market, particularly in the coastal hubs, there’s a cultural inclination toward this softness. It’s the ‘just-now’ philosophy applied to professional logistics. But when you are building a physical presence, ‘just-now’ is a death sentence. You need a partner who understands that a contract is a promise, not a suggestion. I’ve seen projects fail because a local artisan promised to deliver 57 custom light fixtures and then stopped answering their phone 7 days before the show. They weren’t malicious; they were just overwhelmed and didn’t want to disappoint me with a ‘no’ when I first called. Their politeness ruined my month.

This is why I’ve started gravitating toward the people who are almost annoyingly blunt. The ones who look at a 27-page brief and say, “We can do parts A and B, but part C is impossible in this timeframe.” It’s a shock to the system, like a cold shower in a 97-degree humidity spike. But that honesty is the only foundation you can actually build something on. When I work with an exhibition stand builder Cape Town, the relief isn’t just in the quality of the stand; it’s in the absence of the ‘maybe.’ There is a profound, almost spiritual peace that comes from knowing that when someone says they will be there at 7:00 AM on a Tuesday, they will be there at 6:57 AM with a wrench in their hand and a plan in their head. They don’t deal in the currency of ‘should be fine.’ They deal in the currency of ‘done.’

Greta M.-C. once told me, while she was muted during a particularly boring 17-minute keynote, that the most successful people she knew were the ones who were the fastest to reject things. They treated their time like a limited resource-which it is-rather than an infinite sponge. She had a list of 27 vendors she would never call again, not because they did bad work, but because they were ‘vague.’ Vague is the most expensive word in the English language. It costs more than gold, more than oil, and certainly more than the $777 rush fee you’ll inevitably pay to fix a vague person’s mistake.

We have evolved to avoid conflict. Our ancestors probably survived longer if they didn’t pick fights, but the modern business landscape isn’t the savannah. It’s a high-density, high-velocity environment where clarity is the only lubricant that works. When we give a tentative yes, we are trying to preserve a relationship, but we are actually poisoning it. Because when you eventually flake-and you will, because a tentative yes is rarely backed by a solid plan-the person on the receiving end won’t remember how ‘nice’ you were in the beginning. They will only remember the 47 minutes they spent panicking while you didn’t answer your phone.

I’m looking back at those messages from 2017 again. One of them says, “I’m 97% sure I can make that happen.” That 3% gap is where the devil lives. That 3% is the trapdoor that drops you into a basement full of excuses and missed opportunities. I should have replied and asked, “What does the other 3% look like?” but I didn’t. I was too polite. I was too ‘professional.’ I accepted the tentative yes as a firm commitment because I wanted to believe it. I was a co-conspirator in my own disappointment.

There is a specific kind of dignity in a ‘no.’ It shows that you respect the other person’s time enough to let them find someone else. It shows that you know your own limits. We’ve turned rejection into a personal insult when it’s actually a logistical gift. If you tell me today that you can’t help me, I have 7 days to find someone who can. If you tell me ‘maybe’ today and ‘no’ in 6 days, you’ve stolen my week. You’ve committed a form of chronological theft that no insurance policy covers.

I’ve decided to stop using the word ‘tentative.’ It’s been 127 days since I last used it in a professional email, and the world hasn’t ended. In fact, my inbox is cleaner. My relationships are actually stronger because people know that a ‘yes’ from me is ironclad. It’s a 100% yes, or it’s a zero. There is no middle ground, no ‘should be fine,’ no ‘barring anything crazy.’ If something crazy happens, I’ll deal with it, but the commitment remains. Greta M.-C. would be proud. She recently moderated a series of 77 talks over a weekend, and she told me it was the easiest gig of her life because she fired every speaker who couldn’t give her a hard confirmation 17 days in advance. She replaced them with people who were hungry and certain. The audience didn’t miss the ‘big names’ who were too busy to commit; they loved the people who actually showed up.

It’s a hard shift to make. It feels aggressive at first. You feel like a jerk for saying, “I need an answer by 7:00 PM or I’m moving on.” But the irony is that the people who actually matter-the ones who are trying to build things and move the needle-will respect you more for it. They are looking for anchors in a sea of ‘maybe.’ They are looking for the 7% of people who actually do what they say they will do. When you stop being a tentative person, you start attracting people who value certainty. You stop being a victim of other people’s politeness and start becoming the architect of your own schedule.

I think about the physical structures again. The exhibition stands that have to be built, the stages that have to be set, the lights that have to be hung. There is no ‘tentative’ way to weld steel or bolt a frame together. It either holds or it doesn’t. Why should our communication be any different? We should strive for the same structural integrity in our words that we expect from the floors we walk on. If we can’t stand on a ‘maybe,’ why are we trying to build a business on it?

I’m deleting those 37 messages now. They are artifacts of a version of myself that was afraid of being ‘difficult.’ I realize now that being difficult isn’t about saying no; it’s about being unclear. The most difficult person in the world is the one who says ‘yes’ and means ‘perhaps.’ I’m choosing the hard clarity of the truth over the soft comfort of a lie. It’s quieter here, in the land of certainty, but the foundations are a hell of a lot stronger.