Saying No

Communication, Expectation Managment, and Prioritization

Execute, execute, execute

The prerequisite to everything that follows in this article is you have to back it up with performance. Authority must be won by establishing a foundation of trust. Trust can only be established through a track record of success.

You’re the expert.

be firm, direct, concise, and respectful. Don’t use filler words like um and like.

Questions should be used strategically to obtain new information or soften our tone. In the latter scenario we have to be careful about how we phrase the question as we want there to be a clear “right answer” that drives a specific outcome.

Phrasing such as “can we try this?” Or “would this be ok?” Gives the other party the opportunity to reject your suggestion.

You would have been better off with a clear, direct statement that can’t be rejected such as “This is the best practice.”

Speak with authority.

You can speak with authority because you’re the expert in the room.

In fact, the only reason you’re in the room is because you’re the expert. This is true regardless of whether you know the answer to the question being asked.

To this extent, whatever you say IS the correct answer regardless of whether you know the answer. If you don’t know, simple say “I don’t know”.

No one is expected to know everything, and any particular piece of knowledge is relatively useless. There’s no reason to try to learn everything when you don’t know what is going to be useful in the future. What’s much more valuable is the ability and desire to find the answer when prompted. Thus when you don’t know, simply follow up.

Admitting you don’t know something will put weight behind your word when your asked a question you actually can answer correctly off hand. Additionally, committing to and executing on a follow up will earn the trust and respect of your stakeholders.

When you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t avoid the question or dance around it. People notice when you talk about related subject matter without directly answering the question at hand. Be concise and direct .

“I don’t know. Let me take that as a follow up.”

“I’m not certain, but here’s my hypothesis. I’ll confirm offline and circle back.”

“This is how I think it might work based on my knowledge of related systems. I’ll confirm and get back to you.”

Own your calendar.

As the authority/expert on your subject area, your time is valuable and it’s in high demand. It’s your job to maximizing the return on your time when your various stakeholders often have competing priorities.

Thus, time management is one of your most critical skills. It’s also impossible to manage your time if you don’t own your calendar.

Someone who respects your time will ask you if you’re available before booking time on your calendar. Accepting unprompted meeting invites signals that you’re willing to reprioritize your work to accommodate the other person’s priorities. This means you’re willing to deprioritize your own work to focus on what’s important for them and thus your work is less important than theirs.

It’s necessary to train our stakeholders to respect our time by declining meetings that conflict with other priorities. This can easily be done respectfully through a quick “Hey, am I required for this meeting? I’m not available at that time. Here are some options that work for me…” [reframing the timeline] or “Could this be handled over email? I’m not available at the time you booked, but I’d be happy to block one of these other later times if we can’t handle it offline”. [reframing the scope]

The answer to “Am I required on that call?” is usually no. However, if you ask “Do you want me on that call?”, the answer is almost always yes “just in case”.

https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Weigh your priorities.

Obviously weigh the pros and cons of the various things on your plate at the time when making these decisions. Don’t arbitrarily reject asks simply for the sake of setting expectations. Choose your battles wisely and you’ll notice the change over time.

The highest priority is not always the biggest deal or the most consumption. Sometimes the priorities actually the smallest deal, but the one with the most pressing timeline right now. Your big deals might be a few months out, giving you free time today to work on something smaller but more urgent.

Eisenhower’s prioritization matrix is a useful framework when prioritizing your work. Weigh whether something is important for you or important for the party asking you to do it. Most things that have urgency to them are important for other people. We often have priorities across multiple stakeholders competing for our time simultaneously and it’s our job to rank the highest priority across them.

It’s important to use your authoritative voice when relaying your timelines and priorities to your stakeholders. Our stakeholders will gladly deprioritize our other work in favor of their need if we don’t speak authoritatively about what’s the most important for us and how we’re going to spend your time.

You can’t do everything.

We all have full calendars. So you can’t look at new tasks in a vaccuum when considering if you should take them on or how you should approach them. Every time you agree to do something you’re deliberately choosing not to do something else to make time for the thing you agreed to.

There are millions of reasons we might choose not to do something. Not limited to having other bigger competing priorities, there might be a problem/solution mismatch, it might not be aligned to our priorities, or it could be low impact or urgency.

If you don’t have time to do something, pivot the ask or the timeline so the time trade off becomes a high value activity. Often times we can get 80% of the way to complete in 20% of the time and deliver nearly the same value. When that’s the case it doesn’t make sense to complete the task. Stakeholders get much more flexible when we this trade off apparent to them and asking them to help with reprioritizing work you’re doing for them in order to accommodate the new ask.

Delivering solutions vs solving problems.

When you’re asked to do something, use that as a moment for discovery. Stop and question why you’re being asked to do that thing and how it aligns to broader goals and initiatives. If you’re asked to deliver a solution, step back and identify the underlying problem. Rather than delivering a solution because you were asked to do it, be prescriptive about the best way to solve the underlying problem.

The best solution to a problem is not always the solution we were asked to deliver. Often the best solution will be a lower lift than the one you were for.

This also gives you the opportunity to do discovery with your stakeholder. Often we’re asked to deliver a solution that is multiple steps removed from our stakeholder’s priority. Stepping back to identify their priorities allows you to find ways you can align your work with their priorities. This will add the most value.

“What I’m hearing you say is…”,

“so you’re blocked by…”,

“let’s take a step back…”