Saying Yes Means Saying No
So say no with conviction and purpose
It’s the middle of a big project, you are on track to meet the timeline and have done a great job on the deliverable. Then your boss comes to you and asks you to work on something else. You say yes and switch gears, but what happens to the other project? Do you now miss your deadline or deliver a sub-par piece of work, or do you take one for the team and work more than you should? In this example, you say no in both situations – your boss or yourself, even though you said yes.
This is a common scenario. It applies to work, but also to most things in your day. In our own lives, we say no with ease, but when your boss, friend, or family member asks you – it feels like you are just saying yes. All logic of the situation goes out the window.
Most of us know the saying – “saying yes to something means saying no to something else”, but do you really consider it before agreeing to something? Does the context matter or the person the request is coming from? When you are saying no, someone always loses, and in most cases, we would rather that person be ourselves. We’ll work the extra hours, we’ll skip the gym, we’ll reschedule our week – just to say yes.
I used to be that person! Before being a full-time consultant I was a product manager and before that, a project manager. In both of those roles, I was responsible for keeping track of artifacts. These artifacts were projects and features. I was managing these artifacts and my team was the people working on them. This could have been a deliverable such as an app launch or something smaller like a bug fix, but every artifact was linked to people that had to do the work.
I had clients, customers, and my company's c-suite asking me to prioritize artifacts daily. These would come in the form of Slack messages, emails, and knocks on my door (when I was still a co-located employee). They were all asking for that additional feature or that small fix that they thought needed to be in the next release. After saying yes, way too many times – forcing longer hours for my team and budget that was not accounted for, I learned to say no – with conviction and purpose.
The key was to hear the full request, assess its impact, and present the “no“ with a why. After learning this and embedding it into my life, I rarely, if ever say yes to something that will impact something else. I no longer have scope creep or have to skip a workout. I get to really choose what matters.
Yes, there are going to be situations that saying yes will not affect you or the people around you negatively. Maybe your team finished that project early or you went to the gym before work. Now you are free to take on that task or meet that friend.
What about the gray area? Can there be a middle point found? Can you push back the deadline, or ask for a different due date for the new task? Yes, that can be the right solution at times, but you are still saying no. You are telling the customer that their deadline is less important than this other deadline. You are telling your friend that their plans are less important than yours. And to be clear, that is ok!
The takeaway here is not that saying no is good or bad. Saying no is simply saying no. If you are always saying yes, someone, likely yourself is going to take the blowback. Getting good at listening, assessing, and saying no with conviction and purpose is the best way for all parties involved.
Tell your boss no to their next task, because the project is coming together nicely, and delivering this project on time will allow the customer better placement in the app store, allowing thousands of more eyes on our work. Tell your friend no, and that tomorrow works best for dinner because you need to work out to feel like your best self.
This week, I published my first guest post! It turned out great. I would appreciate it if you read it and gave me your thoughts on it and guest posts in general.
It seems to me that the article argues in favour of more “NOs”, yet I don’t think it was an intention 🙂
Aren’t all of these decisions are calculations of opportunity cost? I could argue that keeping an original project and saying “No” to a new one can lead to loosing more clients. For example, we want to add a banner on the website to drive purchases, but we discover that admin portal is not accessible for colour blind users, so a large client can cancel their purchase.
We estimate that banner will get us 500$ in bookings, but lack of accessibility will cancel 1000$ contract. In this case, it’s a 500$ in monetary value lost, if you don’t agree to a new project.
All I’m trying to say - a “yes/no” decision framework can help weight what’s the right call. And it’s a complex grey zone when you need to weight things line physical well being or mental health.