4
When to Say No and How to Say Yes
All day long, the asks keep coming at you from every direction—from your boss, your direct reports, from your sideways and diagonal colleagues. They come from out of the blue from somebody you’ve never even heard of. Or from across the table in the middle of a meeting. Maybe they come by email, even in the middle of an endless reply-all email thread. Or in a text or instant message. Or someone pokes their head into your workspace.
For every ask, the answer, at the core, is either yes or no. Often, the answer—yes or no—is simply not within your discretion to make. The decision has already been made—implicitly or explicitly—by your boss or someone further up the chain of command. That’s why most of the previous chapter deals with maintaining vertical alignment with your boss. You need to know with clarity all of the decisions that you don’t need to make because they have already been made. Your direct reports need the same clarity from you.
Knowing what decisions are not for you to make is like having guardrails. Guardrails can be very empowering. Once you really understand the constraints, what is not within your discretion, it becomes clear what is: everything else. And that’s a lot.
Within those guardrails of vertical alignment is where you have the discretion—the authority and the burden—to field those asks all day long and make tough decisions about yes and no.
The Incredible Power of Reimagining Yes and No
Decisions about yes and no are all about opportunity cost:
- Every bad no is a missed opportunity or a delayed (and maybe soured) opportunity if the no gets overturned
- Every bad yes is a waste of time, energy, and money that will crowd out a better opportunity
- Every good no—or not yet—makes room for a better opportunity
- Every good yes is a chance to make the most of a good opportunity and serve others by adding value and building your real influence
When you make bad decisions about yes and no, you have worse opportunities and experiences today and have less discretion tomorrow. You don’t get to add as much value or develop as many positive relationships.
When you make good decisions, you have better opportunities, better chances to add value and build positive relationships, and earn more discretion for tomorrow.
The stakes are high.
Some people have a strong bias for no. No seems strong because it shuts down activity and it seems less risky because it’s much harder to prove out, good or bad. But if all you’ve got to show for your decisions is a pile of noes, where’s the value?
Yes has a reputation for being the less powerful word: the term “yes man” is pejorative, meant to connote somebody who just goes along. But yes is where all the action is. When your yeses go right, that’s when you hit the jackpot: serving others, adding value, collaborating successfully, and growing your real influence. Yes is the beginning of a collaboration, the start of something. Yes is full of potential, upward-spiraling power.
Every decision about yes and no really comes down to how you’re going to spend your time.
How Will You Spend Your Time?
Start by understanding the hard truth that you can’t do everything. Yes, you’re getting bombarded by people who think that you can do everything. You simply must make choices among those competing priorities, agendas, and egos. Some things are not going to get done until later, and some things might not get done at all. That fact is inevitable.
Unless you accept the reality of competing priorities and make those tough choices better and sooner, at every step, you’ll fall into overcommitment syndrome. But really, so much overcommitment syndrome comes from wrong commitment syndrome—aka, bad decisions about yes and no. That’s how you end up with a lot of forced noes. If you don’t make those choices sooner and better, someone else will, probably later and worse. Later, the best choices may no longer be available. You have to make choices. Make them good ones.
Why do we fail to do that time and again?
When Good People Make Bad Decisions
Some people simply say yes to everything, because they’re trying to be good team players. Or they think “yes, yes, yes” is what will make them a go-to person.
Some people aren’t even aware that they are making decisions, sometimes important decisions. Usually they’ve made the decisions by default, by not making a decision. That lack of awareness is usually how you get to the end of a long day wondering: “What did I even accomplish today?!” Upon reflection, you think of a bunch of decisions you made throughout the day that you didn’t realize you’d made, or that you know you could have made better.
Sometimes the decisions are big ones that you might have to unmake tomorrow, but often they are micro-decisions in response to asks sprinkled among all the interactions occurring constantly at work between coworkers: “Could you help me with this?” “Do you have that piece of information?” “Resource?” “Opinion?” Often these questions boil down to: “Will you please do your part so that I can do my part?”
Why are so many day-to-day yeses and noes so sloppy? The number one reason is that most people aren’t very good at asking. They’re not good at framing, explaining, spelling it out, or breaking it down. Sometimes they think they’ve made an ask, and you didn’t even recognize it.
What about you? Maybe you, too, aren’t so good at asking. You need things from your boss, cross-functional counterparts, and individuals on your project teams. Once in a while, you even need something from someone out of the blue. Maybe the ask, whether you are asking or being asked, seems relatively minor in the moment. So, when you give—or get—an inadvertent answer, it seems relatively inconsequential. But the sloppy ask so often leads to the sloppy yes or the sloppy no:
- You say yes to what looks like a one-off task: proofing a colleague’s report on your joint project. But it actually needs a full rewrite and ends up becoming all-consuming. Or you say no to proofing the report and miss out on a chance to improve how your boss views the project, because the report is such a mess.
- You say no to lubricating the machine, but then the machine breaks and you can’t get your work done. Or you say yes to lubricating the machine and discover, in the process, that the machine needs a lot more than just grease and fixing it is going to take all day.
- You say yes to helping interview new job candidates and then find out this requires traveling someplace distant and inconvenient. Or you say no and discover the interviews will be with a group of candidates who might provide a great new perspective or with candidates who might be great to know going forward. Or you learn that the venue is a beautiful resort in the south of France that might be a fun place to bring your significant other for a tag-on holiday.
You cannot afford sloppy decision making about how you are going to spend your time at work. (See the sidebar “The Key to Making Good Decisions.”)
The Key to Making Good Decisions
Think of the most basic decision-making tool, the weighing of pros and cons. The pros and cons list is just a set of predictions of likely outcomes to a particular choice.
Good decision making is mostly about being able to predict the likely outcomes—to see cause and effect—of one set of decisions and actions as opposed to another.
But experience alone does not teach good decision making. The key to learning from experience is paying close attention and aggressively drawing lessons: What causes led to what effects? What decisions or actions led to the current situation? If you can begin to see the patterns in causes and their effects, then you can start to think ahead with insight.
Have you ever played chess or another game of strategy? The key to success in games of strategy is thinking ahead. Before making a move, you play out in your head the likely outcomes, often over a long sequence of moves and countermoves. If I do A, the other player would probably respond with B. Then I would do C, and he would probably respond with D. Then I would do E, and he would probably respond with F. And so on. This is what strategic planners call a decision/action tree, because each decision or action is the beginning of a branch of responses and counter-responses. Each decision or action creates a series of possible responses, and each possible response creates a series of possible counter-responses.
Be aware of the decisions you are making all day long. Stop and reflect: think ahead about causes and effects, the decision/action tree.
Good Decision Making Requires Due Diligence
Sam is good at deciding. He tunes in to every ask, respects people’s needs, and takes them very seriously. He rigorously considers his response, whether yes or no, because there is nothing like the gift of a good no. Often instead of no, he says, “Not yet,” and sends people back to fine-tune their ask. Or he waits until he’s tackled other priorities before he gives an answer. Then, when it is time for the yes, Sam sets up every yes for success with a clear plan of action including the sequence, timing, and ownership of all the next steps.
If you ask Sam his secret, he’ll tell you he treats every decision as if it’s an important investment decision—because it is. It’s a decision about how he’ll invest some amount of his limited time and energy.
You should do the same: treat every decision about yes and no as a choice about investing your time and energy. If you were making an investment decision in a responsible manner, you would follow a due diligence process. Due diligence is simply a careful investigation of any potential investment to confirm all the relevant facts and seek sufficient information to make an informed judgment so as to prevent unnecessary harm to either party in a transaction. The process protects both the asker and the party saying yes or no.
Take every request seriously enough to do your due diligence. Every good choice you make now will save you and everybody else so much time and trouble later. And it will also make others much more confident in your choices in the future.
Due diligence starts with insisting on a well-defined ask.
If you’re the person asking, make sure you include enough information so the decision maker can make a better choice. And be prepared to answer more questions about your ask.
If you’re the person being asked, do the following: (1) start by tuning in to the ask and the person making the request and asking good questions early and often at every step; (2) know when to say no and not yet; and (3) remember that yes is where all the action is.
What happens is usually something far from that ideal.
A Problem of Process
Consider the following case. One Monday morning, the president of the Americas region of a worldwide consumer-electronics company briefed his executive team on the marching orders he’d just received from the global CEO: develop a new blockbuster product that will be ready to launch the following year. This surprised no one. It was similar to the marching orders from the prior year.
The challenge really spoke to the entrepreneurial spirit in Res, who’d joined the company when it had acquired his invention and his small team, about two years earlier. Technically innovative as well as entrepreneurial, Res was now managing a research and development team. He was eager to make his mark again, this time with an idea for a new kind of machine—small, light, easy to transport, and easy to operate.
Res brought his preliminary drawings and the core elements of a working prototype to the cross-functional new-product innovation team that was choosing which products to move forward into development this year. He wanted the team to put a big bet behind his idea as the potential blockbuster product.
Salina, director of sales, was the first to speak up after Res’s presentation. “Yes, yes, yes!” she said. “Think of all the market share we can take. What an opportunity!”
“No, no, no,” countered Etan, the rather cautious director of quality and regulatory affairs. “This could be a risky endeavor.”
“And,” added Lira, the accountant, “it looks to be a very costly initial investment.” Those were just a handful of the voices at the table. Everyone seemed to have a strong and very swift opinion: yes, yes, yes! or no, no, no! Yet, from the outside looking in, something wasn’t quite right. There was something very wrong indeed: there was a very big question hiding in plain sight.
What Was the Ask?
No one really knew exactly what the ask was. At the simplest level, the CEO’s marching order to the Americas’ executive team was a giant ask, totally vague, and with everything at stake. The CEO could have specified which consumer segment to target, whether to go for a high average sale price versus high-volume product, whether to go after an existing product market with improvements to meet customer demand versus opening up a whole new market with something altogether novel, and on and on. The CEO was adamant, however, that each regional executive team should make such decisions for its own region, partly to leverage regional market savvy, but mostly to drive competition among the regions and generate more innovation bets overall for the company.
The regional president’s ask to the executive team was equally vague: let’s hand this off to the product innovation team. On the surface, this makes sense. Presidents have to trust their people to do their thing. But that’s also how this decision became a research-led initiative because Res was the loudest, most confident voice at the table.
Res was eager to deliver the blockbuster product being asked for, and he had a passion project in his back pocket. He had been working on that lightweight machine for a long time. The problem was that he was presenting his dream for the product—he was preaching and selling—rather than spelling out a clear picture of the ask to the rest of the product innovation team: he wasn’t realistically detailing the time commitments and other resources that would be required of each of the teams represented at the table.
Res’s main point was simply, “We can do this!” But that was actually still an open question. All the teams represented at the table needed to assess how much time was required to develop this product in the next year, and which of their other responsibilities and projects they might have to postpone or cancel.
Res’s second point was, “We don’t have anything else that is nearly as promising and ready to go from research to development.” That, too, was an open question. Other research engineers really should have been included in the discussion. After all, Res’s proposal is not really “Let’s pursue this!” but rather, “Let’s pursue this instead of pursuing someone else’s idea.” To clarify the ask, the other ideas would need better consideration.
Res’s third point was, “This is going to be huge!” He should have been asking, first, for sales, marketing, and accounting to help figure out the upside potential of this idea. Then he should have talked with engineering, quality, manufacturing, shipping, service, and accounting to figure out the investment costs of development and then the ongoing expense of cost of goods sold, so they could figure out potential profitability.
Everyone at the table, however, was focused on the vague marching orders from the top and on the promises Res offered. While there was plenty of pushback, the enthusiasm and volume of the yeses outweighed the caution of the noes.
What resulted was a green light for the next stage: “Let’s start working on Res’s idea and see where it goes.”
Without sufficient rigor in the ask up front, the result was a yes without a plan. That green light, in turn, triggered a cascading series of further asks and answers, each consuming a considerable investment of time, energy, and money. Each of those further asks, it seemed, were all preordained, the yes already implied by the initial decision to green-light the next stage of development.
No one was considering other competing ideas from research because they were being crowded out by attention to Res’s project. Anyway, the research engineers were drawn away from competing ideas and into discussions with the development engineers, who were trying to turn the prototype into a workable design: that also meant pulling in production managers, buyers from purchasing, and design quality-assurance specialists.
Meanwhile, marketing and sales were looking for ways to position, promote, and sell this new product. Accounting was involved in development budgeting as well as projecting possible revenues and profits. Service was anticipating warranty issues and replace-and-repair details. And on and on.
Each successive meeting of the cross-functional product innovation team became a rubber stamp for the next stage of Res’s pet project. The ball was rolling now. There was plenty of new information coming into the picture, at every step. That meant plenty of wild goose chases, changes in direction, and rework. There were unexpected delays. Shifting budgets and schedules. But, after so much time, energy, and money had already been invested, stopping the project no longer seemed like a realistic option.
Issues were uncovered and resolved and details were fine-tuned, so costs went up and delays ensued at each step of the production path. Meantime, this cross-functional group met every other week to monitor, measure, and document progress; troubleshoot, problem solve, adjust—all with the goal of shepherding the product to the launch.
By the time it finally launched, the product was two years late and no longer the new and improved machine that had been promised. It was too heavy and far more costly to the company, once it factored in the massive warranty and service (including shipping) costs with all the returns and repairs in its two-year life span before it was withdrawn from the marketplace, never to be heard from again.
The team members, when last seen, were all still blaming each other, pointing fingers, especially at their cross-functional partners in other departments. But, in reality, the product’s failure started at the very beginning with the sloppy asks from the CEO and the regional president, which produced the original sloppy yes from Res, followed by many more sloppy asks, sloppy yeses, and ultimately, under siege, some sloppy noes late in the game (remember, the key to a good no is when, i.e., coming at the right time).
By neglecting to clarify and interrogate the asks at the outset, the team made a catastrophically sloppy yes at the outset in an astoundingly casual manner, despite its formalized structure, setting in motion a cascade of sloppy decision making along the way, also despite the formalized structure of ongoing status meetings among the project team.
The Human Factor
What’s going on here? Why didn’t these highly trained professionals interrogate the ask—for the decisions enormous and small related to this project? Blame the “human factor.” Simply said, decision making always involves people. This team comprised—as most teams do—very different kinds of people with a wide range of priorities, agendas, personalities, and egos. No matter how much decision and process may be shrouded in the data and logic, facts and reason, don’t be fooled: there is always the human factor. In this case study, all the yes/no viewpoints and behavior sprang from those individual personalities and priorities.
Res is an entrepreneur and an inventor; his success is measured on the basis of how much his research team successfully develops and introduces new products. Res is also an enthusiast who likes to please.
Salina from sales just wants something the company believes its customers will want to buy, buy, buy. After all, they are measured based on sales numbers (sales × average sale price).
Etan is from quality control and regulatory compliance. Such people are paid to be extremely cautious and risk averse. They are measured on things like negative error rates in production yield and negative complaint rates in usability. As a result, quality and regulatory people like Etan tend to be very controlling, trying to keep the engineers and salespeople from hurting people and creating unnecessary liability.
Lira, from accounting, is highly analytical, of course, and focused on counting the beans. Lira is projecting costs of development and then costs of goods sold, planning budgets, and looking for the return on investment, the sooner the better.
Each human stakeholder tends to zero in on the data that rhymes with their viewpoint.
What can you do?
First, Fine-Tune the Ask
Clearly, there were a lot of wrong turns that the cross-functional team members took each time they met to discuss Res’s dream product. But first, before taking any turns at all, they needed to slow down. They needed to stop, back up, and get the clarity and details that would help them make an informed decision.
From one perspective, the marching orders from the CEO, the imperative from the regional president, and the pitch from Res might appear straightforward and simple and an obvious progression. Lurking below the surface, however, was the untamed initial ask, which led to a cascade of sloppy asks, yeses, noes, and more asks, all seeking to navigate to a destination that was never made clear in the first place.
Rather than get drawn into Res’s ask, which was disguised as a solution to the ask for a blockbuster, the team members should have first tuned in to the initial ask from the CEO. They could have learned a lot more from the president and the executive team about appropriate parameters, which would have helped them achieve greater vertical alignment. Within those guardrails, the team really should have considered multiple options and compared them to Res’s idea, which would have made it obvious how many details were missing in Res’s ask.
Instead, the team members were in a hurry to get rolling, so they skipped over the due diligence up front and then stumbled along trying to fully realize a yes that should have been, at most, a “not yet.” As they tried to get from an ill-conceived idea to a decent launch, there was a lot of adjusting along the way and a lot of questioning of the initial decision. Once everything fell apart, nearly every decision looked like an error in retrospect.
But what if the whole thing had gone differently? What if the regional president had stopped up front and tried to fine-tune the CEO’s marching order? For example, “Is the ask here really to launch a new blockbuster product this year? Or is the order actually to create steady growth in revenue plus clear progress toward a new blockbuster product soon?”
Or what if the team members had stopped the regional president up front and really tuned in to that ask as stated, “Develop a blockbuster product ready for launch by the end of the year”? They might have said, collectively:
- “No, that’s not possible.” Or …
- “No, that’s not allowed.” Or …
- “No, that’s not a great idea … because it’s going to starve resources from very doable things that will be very valuable, such as making a fix to an existing product and other things.”
At the very least, they should have said, “Wait, wait. We need to know a lot more about what we are being asked before we proceed: we need to put some parameters around this ask, some guardrails.”
Or what if the team had stopped when Res proposed his idea and really interrogated that ask. Let’s remember that Etan (the quality and regulatory guy) and Lira (the accountant) did try to slow down the group to consider some good reasons for a no. Maybe the group would have seriously considered Etan’s and Lira’s caution if Etan and Lira didn’t both have reputations for saying no to every idea.
Instead of listening to Etan and Lira saying no, no, no, the group preferred to go with Res’s idea to save the day (but sacrifice the future) with a false set of yes, yes, yes promises. What the group should have done was stop and fine-tune Res’s ask:
- First and foremost: “What does the market really want? We should be looking at multiple possible products with likely or proven demand.”
- Then: “What is feasible technically, not just possible? How do we determine, from the outset, that we are designing something for efficient and affordable production and safe use?”
- Finally: “Best case, how many do we think we can sell, to whom, over what time frame, and at what cost?”
- “What is the potential for supply chain problems leading to production delays?”
- “What is the potential for production errors leading to service and replacement costs?”
Just imagine if the team members had slowed down up front to get the answers to those questions. They might have decided that they couldn’t deliver a blockbuster in one year, but maybe they could deliver a blockbuster in two years; meanwhile, what their customers really wanted was a simple upgrade to one of the company’s leading products, which they could deliver in less than a year. Maybe the finance and sales leaders would get together and realize that what they should be doing is looking for another product already in the market and buy it and hire its inventor, as they did with Res two years earlier. That bundle of solutions would have yielded much better outcomes, all in alignment with the CEO’s real needs and the regional president’s need to fulfill the CEO’s needs.
The ask is the time to drill down before you overcommit or, more likely, before you wrongly commit. So much of what we say to each other at work is about asking. Why do we treat our asks—the ones we make and those others make—with so little thought?
A sloppy ask can do a lot of damage. Sometimes the ask is misunderstood: it sounds like more than it is or less than it is, or it sends people off in the wrong direction. Sometimes the ask is not heard at all. It just goes into the ether.
Sometimes people hear the ask and ignore it: “Maybe if I just ignore it, it will go away.” I call this “ghosting the ask.” This is too common when a person doesn’t want to deal with someone else’s need or with saying no. The practice is impolite and disrespectful. At the very least, ghosting gives you a reputation for being unresponsive, not a good reputation to have in a high-collaboration environment. Don’t be a ghost.
How to Tune In to the Ask
If you want to have more power to make decisions, one of the best things you can do is win a reputation for being highly responsive to people’s requests. Tune in to them and engage. That doesn’t mean you have to say yes. You can develop a great reputation for being highly responsive by engaging with the ask. Tuning in to the ask is a sign of taking the asker’s needs seriously and giving them due consideration.
When somebody is coming to you with a request, think in terms of real influence. Look for opportunities to serve others; make yourself valuable. Someone is trying to “hire” you to meet their need. Even if you can’t do it, tuning in to the ask is step one in building the relationship.
Get in the habit of tuning in to every ask and then whipping it into shape. How do you tame the ask?
- When you are the asker, get really good at clarifying and detailing the ask. Put it all in the form of a simple proposal.
- When you are the person being asked, get really good at helping people fine-tune their asks. Ask questions and take notes—do an intake memo to help them drill down and detail their ask.
Whichever side of the ask you are on, you can turn the ask into a more or less simple proposal. If you think about it, that’s what a proposal is—just a very well-formed ask.
The elements of a proposal are:
- The proposed deliverable
- The steps along the way
- The guidelines, parameters, sequence, timing, ownership, and cost of each step
The key is to clarify every aspect accurately and honestly, including the pros and cons; the costs and benefits. Sometimes it’s a tiny ask, but you should make sure you know exactly what is needed and what you can provide.
The problem is that most asks don’t come in that format.
Not only that, but the nature of some asks and the askers is that if you tell them you want them to put all their micro-requests into the form of a coherent proposal, they’ll treat you as if you’re crazy and obstructionist, creating a bunch of ridiculous bureaucracy. And they’d have a point.
So, turn every ask into a brief proposal by getting in the habit of doing intake memos. Ask good questions and build a proposal from the inside out. Lawyers do intake memos. So do accountants and doctors. Do you?
The intake memo is a document that professionals create for their own reference to capture and memorialize the particulars of a need a potential client or customer presents to them. Imagine the confidence that askers will gain in your judgment and your promises, your yeses and noes, if you are creating an intake memo, a mutually approved record, for every ask.
All asks great and small deserve an intake memo. Sometimes you’ll do it on the back of an envelope or the back of your hand or maybe in a notebook you carry everywhere. Or, maybe you’ll start carrying a handheld super-computer on which you can make a note any time anyone makes an ask. Oh. You already do that. Use it.
In an intake memo, you start to gather the information you need as a first step in your due diligence process:
- What is the date and time, for tracking evolutions in the project?
- Who is the asker?
- What is the exact deliverable being requested?
- What is the delivery date?
- What are the specifications?
- What are the resources that will be required?
- What is the source of authority? Who’s asking for it? Who’s authorizing it? Has it already been approved? If so, by whom?
- What are the possible benefits, hidden costs, unsurfaced objections, toes to be stepped on?
The bigger or more complicated the ask, the more information you need to gather. But, often, what seem like small asks end up ballooning into big asks, once you start to delve into the details. That’s one of the best reasons to get in the habit of doing an intake memo for every ask, big or small. Finally, share the intake memo with the asker to ensure you’re on the same page.
Master the No
Lots of people will tell you, “In order to fight overcommitment syndrome, people have to learn how to say no.” But the idea that, if somehow you could sugarcoat your no, people would be happier to accept it is just silly. Of course, be polite. But remember this: what will lead to more and more people accepting your no at face value is when you develop a reputation and build a track record for saying no at the right times for the right reasons.
A good no, well decided at the right time, is a huge favor to everybody. It saves everybody a lot of time and trouble down the road, when yes is going to turn out to have been a mistake. People will remember. (See the sidebar “Yes, No, or Not Yet? How to Say It” later in the chapter.)
There’s nothing quite like a no executed at the right time. No, remember, is all about opportunity cost, freeing up opportunity for good yeses: shutting down or delaying something to make room for something else.
But most people don’t know that timing and logic are the keys to delivering a good no. A no can be very sloppy, in very many ways. Just ask the people who relied on Rick, a service technician.
Rick was very much in demand because he could fix anything. Everyone wanted to go to him. But over the years, he’d gotten into a bad habit. He said yes to the things and the people he wanted to, and no to the things he didn’t want to do or to people he didn’t like. This made Rick feel pretty powerful. But when his boss learned about Rick’s selective system, he wasn’t happy. The boss implemented a decision-making process, and thereafter, all requests for Rick’s help went first through the boss and his process. Meantime, Rick’s bad decision making—especially his sloppy noes—lost him a lot of the professional standing and personal power he once had.
Noes end up being sloppy for any number of reasons. The no may come from personal reasons of dislike, as Rick’s did, or in dismissal of someone insufficiently important to seek to impress. The no may come because there have been too many yeses and now there is simply no room for a yes.
When people give out sloppy noes, here’s what happens: sometimes they get overruled and have to comply anyway, but by now there may be bad feelings. Of course, too many noes are forced upon you by your own overcommitment syndrome, which then causes you to miss out on some great opportunities to add value, develop relationships, and build up real influence.
If the ask was a good idea, but unclear or otherwise not fully developed, then the no might be sloppy because the answer should have been “not yet … go back and improve the ask.” Even the worst no at least doesn’t waste time, energy, and resources spent in the wrong direction. But inaction is a decision nonetheless, depriving you of engagement with the ask and the asker, as well as experience making good decisions.
The very good no is all about timing and the logic of due diligence.
When to Say No
No at work is a way to prevent you and your colleagues from wasting time and attention and, very likely, money and other resources. No is how you protect yourself and others from making bad commitments, dedicating resources trying to do things that cannot be done (not possible), are not allowed (against the rules), or that on balance, should not be done (a bad idea or not the next top priority).
I call these reasons the “no gates,” borrowing from the concept of the gate review process, a project management technique dividing projects or initiatives into distinct phases, each of which must be subjected to a review: a “go, no go” decision point, a yes or no. At each gate, certain requirements must be met.
The No Gates
You have to pass the no gates in order to get to yes (giving one or getting one):
- I simply cannot do it. I don’t have the skill, knowledge, capacity in time, resources, or energy.
- I’m not allowed to do it. There are procedures, rules, guidelines, or regulations that prohibit it.
- I should not do it. This one is tough because it requires making a real business decision about likelihood of success, potential return on investment, or next top priorities.
The “should not be done” no gate is not always so clear, at least not at first. That’s why the answer might be “maybe” or “not yet.” In that case, you probably should send the asker back to make a more thorough or more convincing ask or proposal. Maybe you will have some very specific questions that you want the person to answer or objections to address.
If the answer is “not yet,” and the asker can’t wait—or if it is “no” and they’re going to proceed without you—you probably don’t want to let this be the end of the relationship. So, what else can you do at this stage?
- If you really think the idea is a bad one, you can try to convince the asker not to do it or to alter their plans. You might be doing them a huge favor. The better your track record of making good judgments, the more you’ll be able to have an impact on their plans.
- If you think the idea is fine, but just not for you right now, then maybe you can help them find an alternative go-to person. This could be a chance for you to start creating a backup for yourself and building up another go-to person to extend and strengthen your networks. You will be doing a favor for both parties by putting them together.
- In either case, don’t lose the opportunity to make clear all the ways you might add value for each other in the future. Make sure that they understand what you do and that you understand what they do.
Master the Yes
Every good no makes room for a better yes.
Yes is positive. Yes signals agreement. Yes is usually good news. Yes should mark the beginning of a collaboration—the next steps in a working relationship. Yes should mean that a well-formed ask was made and carefully considered and that all the no gates have been successfully passed. Yes should mean we are about to embark on a good idea together.
But so often yes is sloppy. It’s handled haphazardly or comes in an offhand way—“Yes, of course!”—without a full understanding of what’s even been asked. Sometimes, yes is implied through inaction. That happens, in certain situations, when you ignore a request for too long or you fail to shut down a course of action. Yes can be weaponized (as a verb) by those who yes others in order to feign agreement and cut off efforts to convince. When yes is a feigned commitment intended to induce the asker to reasonably rely on the promise, it is actually fraud.
Maybe the ask is not clear and so the yes cannot be clear. Or the yes is made to please in the short term or impress or avoid conflict. Or the yes comes after a series of mediocre or bad noes, so yes just finally seems due in the queue (in other words, for no good reason).
Yes, No, or Not Yet? How to Say It
No at the right time for the right reasons is always a gift, so make it clear: No …
… I physically cannot do it because I don’t have the necessary ___________ [experience, skill, knowledge, time, tools, etc.] … Allow me to introduce you to another go-to person.
… I am not allowed to do it because it is against the ______________ [law, rules, procedures, or marching order from my boss] … Allow me to recommend a go-to person to learn more about this.
… I should not do it, at least right now, because ________________ [there are other items higher on my current priority list, or I don’t think it’s a good idea, or the ask is still not sufficiently clear] … Allow me to introduce you to another go-to person, or perhaps we can return to this discussion at a later date and time.
Remember, you can always say no (or yes, actually) by saying “yes” …
I can do this in two days … or two weeks … or two months … or two years.
Sometimes the answer is “not yet” … and
… May I ask you some questions to better understand exactly what you need?
or
… Help me understand if I’m the one who can help you meet your needs on time and on spec in this case, or if I need to help you find someone else who can.
Yes, when you say it at the beginning of a collaboration, make it clear: Yes …
… How can I help you help me help you? What information can I provide about how I do what I do?
or
… I’ll do abc by this date or time, and you do xyz by this date or time; let’s talk again for a fifteen-minute check-in at the end of the day Thursday. How does that sound?
The Backlash of the Sloppy Yes
When people make sloppy yeses, they get overcommitted, but this goes way beyond overcommitment syndrome. When you are overcommitted, you miss out on better yeses, so the cost of every sloppy yes multiplies in opportunity cost. Plus, you commit not just your time but also resources, and often the time of other people (possibly your team, if you are a manager). It’s likely to take a while before you realize the yes was not good, and you may well have wasted a bunch of time, energy, and money. And you’ve likely caused problems that have to be fixed.
The sloppy yes can also leave you susceptible to errors and delays, wasted resources, rework, not to mention project scope creep and role creep. That can happen if the ask was a good idea but unclear and not fully developed. Or if the yes was made with all the available information, but then it was poorly planned. That’s like driving in the wrong direction, with a car full of people, wasting all that time, gas, and wear and tear on the vehicle. Sometimes you get a flat tire along the way or get into an accident; then, not only do you have to come all the way back, but you still have to get wherever you should have been going in the first place.
In addition, sloppy yeses are often highly visible, so they are not great for your reputation. You can point fingers and blame others, but that won’t be good for your relationships or your reputation. It’s certainly no way to build real influence. (See the sidebar “The Yes People.”)
The Yes People
Watch out for the classic types who are very uncareful in how they say yes. And don’t be one yourself.
The Entangler
The entangler seen in chapter 2’s bad attitudes is often well meaning, but gets too involved in your details and tries to involve you in too many of theirs. It’s as if they are lonely and want you to keep them company. They often present themselves as an ever-ready helper—a sidekick or someone looking for a sidekick. The entangler wants two people doing the job of one person—two hands, one hammer. They can consume a lot of your time and be hard to untangle from.
The Generous Fool
The generous fool is the person, always well meaning, who wants desperately to be of service, but is not very good at it. They promise to do things for you that they are simply unable to do or that they are not allowed to do. So they’ll likely take up too much of your time, give you the impression that your needs are being taken care of, but ultimately disappoint you. Generous fools might think they are meeting your needs, until the very end when they deliver and you discover that they didn’t meet your needs at all. All the while, you have missed the opportunity to engage with someone who could help you. So, be nice to the generous fools, but don’t work with them. Be generous, but don’t be a fool.
The Overpromiser
Overpromisers sometimes look like the generous fool, because they often come from a good place as they aim to please. They love the feeling at the moment of the promise, like giving a kid cotton candy for dinner. Overpromisers think they are taking the easy way out on the front end by not doing the due diligence. But before long, they pay a big price, and so will the people around them. Sometimes overpromisers are big talkers. They love to impress in a meeting or when they are talking to the boss, a customer, or another big shot. Sometimes, overpromisers go rogue. They want to be helpers or heroes or have a fun adventure. Of course, rogues may also tend to ditch their rogue commitments at the last minute.
If you have a tendency to overpromise, remember that the short-term gratification for you and the person you make a promise to will soon be far overshadowed by the negative impact of overpromising: failure to deliver, delays, mistakes, and relationship damage.
Set Up Every Yes for Success
Remember, every good no is there just to set up your great yeses—saying yes to collaboration, saying yes to an opportunity to add value and build a relationship.
Every yes deserves a plan for focused execution. The execution plan is the key to a great yes.
Some yeses are short and sweet, but they still deserve a plan, however short and sweet. Every yes is a commitment, and every commitment deserves to be taken seriously and honored with a good plan and focused execution.
If you have done a really good job tuning in to the ask, doing an intake memo, and framing the ask in terms of the basic elements of a proposal, and seriously considered the no gates, including an ROI analysis, then you should have a pretty good idea of what you are committing to when you say yes. Still, if you are not yet accustomed to working together with the asker—if they are not one of your regular customers—there will be plenty of details to clarify about how you are going to do business together. Don’t take the details for granted or you will likely have one small surprise after another.
Yes is the time to really pin down the commitment with a plan of action, especially for a deliverable of any scope. How do you move the conversation from yes to a plan? By asking the platinum question: “How can I help you help me help you?” In other words, what ground rules might you need to establish for working together? What will be your cadence of communication, where, when, and how? In terms of the work: Who is going to do what, where, why, when, and how? You need to agree on the sequence, timing, and ownership of all the steps. End every conversation by clarifying who owns which next steps and scheduling your next follow-up conversation. The punch line is always the next steps. Planning is the key to successful execution. Plan the work so you can work your plan.
Make Better Choices, Early and Often
Imagine if you and all your collaboration partners could start making better, more intentional decisions about how you all allocate your time and energy. Every single yes means there’s more work to be done. The chapters that come next—“Work Smart,” and “Finish What You Start” are all about execution.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
• Take other people’s needs seriously by giving every ask its due diligence.
• Make better choices sooner.
– Every good choice now will save everybody so much time and trouble later and will make others more confident in your choices in the future.
• Tune in to every ask with an intake memo.
– Ask good questions and build a proposal from the inside out. Use this approach to guide your own asking, too.
• Learn when to say no (or not yet).
– Here are the “no gates”:
I simply cannot do it. I don’t have the skill, knowledge, capacity in time, resources, or energy.
I’m not allowed to do it. There are procedures and rules that prohibit it.
I should not do it. It’s just, on balance, not a good idea or my next priority. The answer might be “not yet.”
• Learn how to say yes.
– Every yes deserves a focused execution plan.
– Establish ground rules for working together, a cadence of communication, and a clear sequence, timing, and ownership of all the steps.