Having worked in software for a number of years I often
noticed how my workload seemed to accumulate almost from no where (I use that
term deliberately). I’d find myself with multiple ‘mini’ projects on the go,
tight deadlines and a fair amount of pressure. I’d sit back and wonder ‘how it came
to this?’. The answer could usually be traced back to a conversation about a
proposal, change request or upgrade where I agreed to take on something that in
hindsight was not a good idea. It was driven by a reluctance to say ‘No’.
Where this reluctance came from, I’m not quite sure. I
worked in a few start-ups where nothing was impossible, crazy deadlines and
late nights were par for the course. Saying ‘No’ was not part of the culture in
that environment and the customer was literally always right. Not
saying ‘No’ and always acceding to customer demands, can lead to a situation where your customers run your business, not you. That is not a good thing, even in start-ups. Product road-maps get hi-jacked,
innovation suffers at the expense of piecemeal tweaking and delivery.
So assuming saying ‘No’ needs to be done every now and
again, is there a good or bad way of delivering the potentially bad news? Turns out there is.
I came across a neat article which explained it in an equation called the ‘Empathy
Sandwich’ as “No= Empathize + Decline + Empathize Again”. For
example a client says ‘Can you add a new
screen to report on XYZ?, it takes me ages to do it manually‘ . First comes a little
bit of empathy ‘Ok , I see where you are coming from, it’s not easy to get time
for that every week’. But then comes the Decline – ‘But I don’t have a project
team I could put on that change‘. Followed up by some more empathy ‘I hope your workload levels out, you guys do
a really great job over there’.
That example might
sound a touch contrived but you get the point. Saying ‘No’ in a way that shows
some consideration and understanding beats a dismissive tone and helps keep the
relationship going, despite the refusal.
By saying ‘No’ you
will free up more time, finish more projects, deliver higher quality work and
end up fire-fighting a lot less. That will make for happier customers in the
long term as you can focus on innovative product development, meet the deadlines
you do commit to and not get pulled between multiple piecemeal requests. You
will be happier too. Who could say ‘No’ to that?
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