How to transform 'Yes, but' into 'Yes, and': Practicing Psychological Safety

You have likely heard this phrase in a meeting room:

“That’s a great idea, but…” I have rarely seen anything truly productive follow that conjunction. A newborn idea often trips over that one word, and the meeting returns to its familiar, stagnant state.

Blockbuster laughed off Netflix’s acquisition offer, and Kodak stashed the digital camera invented by its own engineer in a drawer. Neither company failed because they were incompetent. On the contrary, both were collections of experts who understood their businesses better than anyone. So why did they trip over the same hurdle time and time again?

The answer lies in one common conjunction: ‘But.’ If we examine what this word actually does within an organization, we can see why successful companies stop in the face of an obvious future—and how we can swap it out for ‘And.’

Status Quo Bias and Confirmation Bias: Why ‘But’ comes out first

This isn’t a matter of willpower; it’s a matter of design. Beneath the resistance to change lie three layers of defensive barriers.

The first is Status quo bias.

Humans feel the pain of losing $1,000 about twice as intensely as the joy of gaining $1,000—a concept known as Loss Aversion, identified by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

Since change ultimately requires letting go of what we currently have, the brain perceives it as a loss from the start.

Furthermore, the brain is lazy. Walking a familiar path requires almost no energy, while evaluating a new path consumes expensive cognitive resources.

When you add the ’endowment effect’—which inflates the value of what we already own—the conclusion to “stay the course” is practically predetermined.

How powerful this bias is can be seen in organ donation consent rates.

When asked, “Check this box if you do NOT want to donate” (opt-out), most people leave it as is. Conversely, when asked, “Check this box if you DO want to donate” (opt-in), consent rates plummet.

Research shows that a single default option significantly alters the result. However, some argue that this gap only applies to paperwork, as the difference in actual transplantation numbers is much smaller due to realistic variables like family consent procedures.

The second is confirmation bias.

We embrace information that aligns with our existing thoughts with a “Just as I thought,” while pushing away conflicting information by saying, “That’s wrong.”

In 1941, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet was trapped in the belief that “Japan would never attack Pearl Harbor,” leading him to ignore repeated warnings sent from Washington.

There is a painful example in Korea as well: the case of Yoon Sung-yeo, who served 20 years for the Hwaseong serial murders after investigators decided on a conclusion early on and only collected evidence that fit it.

The habit of seeing only what we want to believe does not end with individual delusion.

The third is the brain’s fire alarm: the amygdala.

Evolved over millions of years to help us avoid predators, this circuit reacts to the phrase “Let’s change our way of doing things” in the exact same way.

When a danger signal is triggered, the body reflexively reaches for defense mechanisms like denial, rationalization, and projection.

“That technology couldn’t possibly affect our industry” (denial), “The training costs would be too high if we adopted it now” (rationalization), “I don’t think it’s me, but the customers who won’t like it” (projection).

If we compress these three layers of defense into one sentence, it becomes: “Yes, it’s a good idea, but…”

Why Blockbuster and Kodak collapsed because of ‘But’

There is no shortage of recorded history where this psychology actually brought down companies.

In 2000, founders of an obscure startup visited the headquarters of Blockbuster, the king of the video rental market, and offered to sell their company for $50 million. CEO John Antioco laughed at them. Ten years later, Blockbuster went bankrupt, and that startup became Netflix.

There were two reasons:

Loss aversion, as they couldn’t give up the guaranteed revenue from stores and late fees,

And confirmation bias, as they dismissed the dot-com boom as a “bubble” and only sought out evidence to support that claim.

Kodak’s story is even more ironic.

In 1975, 24-year-old engineer Steve Sasson demonstrated the world’s first digital camera to management. The response? “That’s cute. But don’t tell anyone about this.”

Trapped in an identity built on selling film and photo paper, management put the future they had invented into a drawer with their own hands.

In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection.

Nokia is slightly different.

In the mid-2000s, they held over 40% of the global mobile phone market and had even introduced the ‘Communicator’—a precursor to the smartphone—in 1996, long before Apple launched the iPhone.

They didn’t fail because of a lack of technology. In-depth interviews with 76 current and former executives by researchers at INSEAD and Aalto University revealed that the core of their downfall was ‘organizational fear.’

Engineers and middle managers knew their Symbian OS was falling behind iOS, but they swallowed the news, fearing they would be labeled incompetent if they passed it up the chain.

Management was trapped by the pressure to promise a rosy future to investors, becoming disconnected from the truth on the ground.

It was a silence created by two layers of fear: those below fearing for their jobs, and those above fearing for their reputation.

Xerox is the most paradoxical case.

In the 1970s, feeling uncertain about the future of the copier business, Xerox founded the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which created the personal computer, the graphical user interface (GUI), the mouse, and Ethernet.

When a young Steve Jobs visited in 1979, he saw the GUI and immediately recognized the future, taking those ideas to build the Macintosh.

To Xerox management, the personal computer was just a device that had “nothing to do with our copier business.”

Even continental drift couldn’t escape confirmation bias

One might think, “Surely science is different,” but when German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift in 1915,

the geological community defeated him with this logic: “The evidence is interesting. But you cannot explain what force could move such massive continents.”

Confirmation bias, aimed at protecting theories and reputations built over decades—combined with the fact that Wegener was an ‘outsider’ meteorologist rather than a geologist—made the defense even stronger.

Only after seafloor spreading and mantle convection were discovered did Wegener’s theory resurface under the name of plate tectonics.

In a sense, the geological community proved through its own history that expertise and success can become the greatest barriers to accepting new explanations.

Psychological Safety: The operating system of a fearless organization

That is the diagnosis.

Now, it is time for the prescription.

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defined psychological safety as a shared belief that one will not be punished for raising problems or admitting mistakes.

It is easy to misunderstand this; it does not mean “let’s all get along.” It is quite the opposite.

Safety is what allows painful statements like “I disagree with that opinion” to be exchanged honestly and constructively.

Why this is important becomes clear when we look back at the brain.

When we feel psychologically safe, the amygdala’s alarm quiets down, and the prefrontal cortex, which handles higher-order thinking, takes over.

When Google analyzed its high-performing teams for years through ‘Project Aristotle,’ this sense of safety was a vastly more important variable than the individual capabilities of team members.

5 ways for leaders to practice psychological safety

Principles are fine. The question is what to say differently at the Monday morning meeting.

• Redefine work as a ‘process of learning together’ rather than ‘perfect execution.’ Instead of saying, “You must do this without mistakes,” if a leader admits, “We are in the process of finding the answer ourselves,” team members will gain the courage to ask about what they don’t know.
• Leaders should show vulnerability first. A single sentence like, “I’m not sure about this part myself,” demonstrates through action that admitting mistakes is a process, not a punishable offense.
• Ask questions instead of giving orders. Questions like, “Why do you think that way?” or “Is there a perspective we’ve missed?” send a direct message to team members that their thoughts matter.
• When failure is reported, ask “what” created this result, not “who” caused it. The moment you start looking for a culprit, everyone shuts their mouths.
• Structurally request dissenting opinions and publicly thank those who provide them. Dissent from the minority saves meetings more than the silence of the majority.

Pixar’s Braintrust and the ‘Yes, and’ conversation technique

Pixar’s ‘Braintrust’ is the best example of a culture where these five principles actually work.

It is a meeting where fellow directors watch a film in production and provide honest feedback. The principle Ed Catmull revealed in the Harvard Business Review is simple:

“Candor, Not Command”—The Braintrust has the right to advise, but no authority to direct.

Final decisions and responsibilities always remain with the director. Therefore, the director can listen to opinions without having to be defensive.

When the shared belief that “our films all suck at first” is added to this, failure becomes a process to pass through, not something to avoid.

What happens if we apply this to everyday conversation?

One tool borrowed from psychology is enough: ‘Cognitive restructuring’ from cognitive behavioral therapy.

It is based on the principle that it is not the event itself, but the interpretation of that event that determines emotions and actions.

All a leader needs to do is notice the “but…” thought pattern and help change it to “and…”

• “We lack resources, but…” → “I agree that we lack resources. And what is the smallest experiment we can test with what we currently have?”
• “That’s too dangerous, but…” → “You are right that there are risks. And what can we do right now to mitigate those risks?”

This ‘Yes, and’ technique originally came from the stage of the Chicago improv troupe Second City.

The first rule of improv is “Don’t deny your partner’s proposal (No Buts), accept it (Yes), and add your own to it (And).”

If a meeting room simply borrows this one rule, criticism becomes the starting point for problem-solving rather than blame. This is how ‘but’ organizations and ‘and’ organizations differ:

Classification	‘But’ Organization	‘And’ Organization
Core Emotion	Fear of failure	Psychological safety
Information Flow	Hides bad news	Shares honestly
Handling Failure	Finds the person responsible	Analyzes the cause
Key Examples	Blockbuster, Kodak, Nokia	Pixar, Google

Next time you feel a “but” about to slip out in a meeting, pause for a moment and try saying “and” instead.

You only need to add one sentence about how to solve the problem. It is a small habit, but the way the entire organization approaches ideas will change from that point on.

It is not the organization with the best ideas that wins. It is the organization that can fearlessly bring those ideas out, nurture them, and execute them that wins.