Monday, September 14, 2009How to say NO by saying YES
Johanna Rothman, a dear friend and one of the most excellent management consultants I've seen, has a post about managers who won't take no for an answer. Read it, it's interesting!
But I'd like to approach the same issue from a different angle - Instead of looking at why the manager wants something, let's try and look on why we say "No" to that something (This is a good place to try the five whys technique).
Usually we'll find that we say no because the requested item might be of lower priority and could interfere with much more pressing items. Sometimes we'll just feel like the manager is asking fomr something just because he\she can - and we don't like people wasting our time.
Instead of saying no, let's let the manager figure out if a "No" is indeed in order. WHat you'd need for this is at the very least a Visual Task board or an excel file with the list of tasks you're doing and backlog of items to be done, ordered by priority.
Next time the manager comes in and asks for something in the middle of something else, drag them over to look at the task board. Now, create a new post it note with the task at hand, and ask thema simple question:
How important is this?
If they say "I'd love to have it today", ask them :
OK, that means we will have to stop working on one of these following tasks (point to the "in progress" column). Are you OK with us stopping to work on [pick one of the cards in progress]?
If they say yes - great. Not only did you find an important feature to work on, you've also let the manager know the cost of doing that feature: Stopping to work on another feature. But what usually happens is that the manager soon realizes that this cost exists, and may not want to replace an existing in progress task - since these are all pretty important as well.
The manager might say "well, no, it's not that important".
This is the point where you ask them to actually place the card in the "TODO" column just above one of the other tasks in it. They get to choose which is more important. More often than not, the task at hand will not be important enough to trump any of the existing "TODO" cards, so it will be at the bottom.
Now you've gained something else - the manager has agreed knowingly to delay that feature request, since they know its true cost.
Visual Task boards help you teach your manager when to say "NO' all on their own.
Reader Comments (4)
Quite interesting but some bosses usually push new tasks because they’re important in that moment (probably they are really important!).
In my opinion the real problem is not the real/supposed priority but the context switching: how can I say to a person of my team to change task every 2/3 days? The risk is to make them feel like raw resources.
More often Managers tend to forget the importance of the tasks at hand before coming up with a new 'important' task, I do this all the time, this also helps them plan that there's something else more (or less) important in the works already, so it works both ways.
I find that a project plan (using some automated tool like MS Project) works just as good especially with large projects. Enter their task and watch the ripple effect. This can be an eye opening experience. These tools usually factor in other distractions like weekend, holidays, and vacations. They also take into account task dependencies too. So depending on who you assign the task to the project end date can push out a long way to insert a one day task! If the manager still wants to do that then the project plan is updated and all stakeholders are informed. If they don't want the task just hit delete.
Dave: I really dislike using MS project. Since I can't trust it with any meaningful long term results, why would I want to use it to show the long term ripple effect to my manager?
Just the overhead of managing the MS project file itself takes the wind out of me.