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Learning to Say No in the Workplace?
Ummagumma asks: "I'm trying to find out how those of you who work in the IT service industry, tell customers 'no', when the requests are unreasonable for whatever reason. There is a culture here of 'piling-on' work with regards to IT - and, unfortunately, I've never learned the proper way to tell people 'no'. It may sound simple, but in this economy, where jobs are tough to come by, I don't want to be seen as the impediment to getting things done Any suggestions on telling people that their work request can wait? Especially in a way that won't jeopardize my future here? I've searched the web, but most of the sites that supposedly have information of this type just want you to sign up for their seminars. I'm looking for actual, real-world experiences, and how the people of Slashdot deal with this issue on a day-to-day basis."
"Here is my dilemma: I'm a relatively new employee (~2 months) at a software engineering shop. I am the sole IT person for a 100+ person company, with 50+ remote VPN users, 40+ developers, 30+ servers, firewalls, etc. I do it all, from desktop and application support, to security, to servers. In the past, the IT department has been seriously under-funded, and there is an absolute ton of catch-up work that needs to get done. At this point, I could work 70+ hour work weeks for a year, and still not be caught up, between project work, upgrade, documentation and day-to-day stuff.
I've inquired about more IT budgeting (staff, equipment, etc.), and that just is not going to happen for quite a while."
Just tell them 'no', and explain to them the reason why the request is unreasonable.
I will share with you a tidbit of wisdom from those of us in design: keep track of how you're spending your time. Keep a detailed record of what you are spending your time doing and who is asking you to do it. Show this document to your manager and have them prioritize your time so that there are some rules in place. Managers are there to make sure you can do your job, make them work for a change.
I'm reminded why I bill hourly now.
- a designated project manager who is the one point of contact with the customer, and is ultimately responsible for customer management
- a change control process. if the customer asks for a change, we say "okay, we'll analyse that". then we get back to them to communicate the impact. "we can do the change, but we need $x, or y more people, or z more days."
So there's no need to actually say "No". You just have to point them to reality: there's only a certain amount of things a given number of people can do in a given time.You probably already understand one of its key points (or will very soon): it's not sustainable for you or anyone else to work more than about 40 hours, week in, week out, without turning crispy. Work is different from time in front of keyboard or slumped in your chair. You can rack up a lot of hours north of 40/week, but in the long run will have almost nothing to show for them. Additionally, the book will tell you how to say no, as you requested.
One more thing. If you are supporting 100 people, then your days are unquestionably one series of interruptions crashing into each other. There's strong practical advice here about how to minimize interruptions, and work toward having an environment in which you can actually get something done without having to use "hiding" tricks. One of the stories in the book is about a developer who was so bugged by interruptions in his cubicle that he took to working in a toilet in the men's room for an hour at a time. I hope you aren't near that point yet.
Here's the book at Amazon: but you can get at the library, and probably faster.
yes, i will get a million geeks on my neck for saying this, and heck, before i became a corporate whore i was against this. But now i've seen the usefullness of this.
make up a system which includes procedures for change managment and incident managment. Everytime someone asks for something, ask them wether it is an incident or a change (or decide yourself), if its an incident (in which case you have break/fix situation), you know its a valid/urgent request and you can work on it. If its a change, you put it into a change managment system, together with the rest of the work you already have. Make this work visible (give out ticket numbers and such), so next time they want an update, you can refer them to your change managment webpage and they can see which project(s) are still to be fixed before theirs is started. This way, you dont come off as a sluggish worker AND you keep your customer happy.
ITSM, love it or hate it, but it sure is usefull.
I always work with a strict feature schedule. I'm (amongst other things) responsible for a number of applications running in this organisation I work for. For all these applications there exists a *huge* wishlist. So what I basically have done is decide which features go in which version. Every feature gets a timeline attached to it (cost aren't really a big option here, but time is) and these timelines combined get a releasedate per version. Now, new features (as opposed to bugs!!) get pushed in behind in the queue and are versioned. And just stick fanatically to this versionlist. This helps me a lot (and has also helped me a lot when I used to work for a webdev company)
I was in the same boat you are in a few years ago. I was hired as the sole IT person to support 100+ users runnind Windows and Macs. The amount of work to be done was overwhelming. I was woring from 8am till 8pm, 6 days per week trying to keep up with the workload.
Turns out they fired my tail because someone in the company didn't like my attitude, and replaced me with a staff of three. My suggestion to you is to set your work hours and do as much as possible within them, but make sure you go home on time, unless they pay you overtime. You shouldn't sacrifice your personal life to compensate to their inadaquate staffing levels since it's unlikely they will appreciate it.
I am a contractor doing freelance tech support, sound design, and web app programming. I've found that the best way to keep clients from taking advantage of me is to charge a lot.
Seriously! When clients have to feel their pocketbook getting lighter, they stop asking for piddling things and keep requests to important items.
Jory
If the root problem is that your line manager has ridiculous expectations (or hasn't the guts / seniority to stand up to unreasonable clients), you could take two approaches. You could escalate the workload issue up the management chain, or to your HR dept (as a health and safety issue). This risks getting you into your line manager's bad books.
The other approach is to exert pushback against your manager's unreasonable expectations.
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Get into the habit of giving your
boss written estimates of how long it will take
to do things, and keep a log of the actual time taken. If your boss knows you are doing this, he may think twice about overworking you.
- If your boss sets you unreasonable deadlines, don't be afraid to miss them.
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When your boss demands that you work excessive hours, don't. He cannot FORCE you to do this. Indeed, the chances are that he won't be in the office when you be leaving
... so leave earlier. If he asks why, tell him the truth; i.e. that you were too tired to work effectively.
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If you are overtired or stressed out because of overwork, take a sick day. If you can get a doctors certificate that says "work related stress" or "exhaustion", even better.
If your boss unreasonably threatens to sack you for not working hard enough, don't walk, or threaten to walk. Instead, bide your time while quietly start looking for a better job. Remember, if your boss actually sacks you, he / his business will take a big hit in a number of areas; time / money to recruit a new person, loss of productivity, loss of morale, etc. If he has half a brain, he will know this.It's called Negotiation and is one of the hardest things to get right in business.
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If it's a client, you have to politely inform them that while you may not be able to get the job done for the time they are requesting, you can certainly aim for 'x time' - never mention other projects that you are working on for a client as you always want them to get the impression that they are the most important.
Never say No to a client - if you no you can't do it, then outsource it.
If it's your boss, you have to negotiate more heavily, as the boss is certain to 'pull rank' to get his/her way. Again, you need to request more time, however at this point you can indicate all the other project that you are working on and set a priority list
Ok boss, if this job is so urgent, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put X job on the back-burner to get it done.
Finally, if it's a marketing person who said to the client "Sure, we can get that done by next week Tuesday easy !", you have to hunt that marketing person down and kill them - after all, marketing types are a dozen a dime and really have little use except for blood-sport...
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
PS If anyone knows an OSS MS Project replacement that can do all this stuff, please speak up. I've been dying to replace it for ages, but it's a really good fit for this particular problem space
DotProject is almost there, still in beta tho but ive been using it for a few weeks and its perfectly usable.
>>I've searched the web, but most of the sites that supposedly have information of this type just want you to sign up for their seminars.
There's a great book "Rapid Developemnt" by Steve McConnel, I recomment every developer/project manager to read it. I remember reading a good section on how to say 'No' in a professionl way.
He has a bunch of exerpts and articles here:
http://www.stevemcconnell.com/
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
The queue list was the first page anyone saw. From that page, you could 'Enter a new problem request', which let users fill out a small form that has:
- A one line description of the problem
- An elabortate free form description
- A priority chooser for hi/med/low/whatever
- An email 'cc list' for the problem
The tasks would all show up in the queue, sorted by priority and status, or you could click on the headings to resort by name, date, etc.Sysadmins could reprioritize, and add comments, which would be mailed to the user, and anyone else in the cclist.
The important thing:
- *** Make the queue publically viewable ***
This way everyone sees what issues are afoot, without having to ask, or walk over to the sysadmin department. For a large company, this is important, as systems can easily become a 'hang out area' where people would bottle neck and commiserate, preventing the admins from getting work done.By letting everyone see right away how busy things are, they can prioritize on the fly. You can browbeat people who make everything unreasonably 'high priority', and prioritize them down. Go to their managers if they're being persistent, so you can find out if things are really as important as the user makes it sound.
As the report grows longer than humanly manageable, which is inevitable, use it as documentation to the supervisors as proof you need more staff. It can also be used to show how many issues you (or your department) resolve per day.
This way, everything goes through the queue; data is entered by the users (so you don't have to do the paperwork for them, ie. a white board), and people can record problems as soon as they're encountered, complete with email feedback. Everyone at the company can see the queue at all times. Even remote users can file requests.
Prevents unnecessary confrontations, phone calls, and 'hanging out' near the sysadmin offices, letting the admins keep busy, and prevents things from falling through cracks.
When items are resolved, they go into an archive, which can be searchable via a simple regex search form.
I implemented this all back in 1996 with a few perl scripts for the systems department (of which I was not a member; I was a systems programmer), and ascii only files (one file per request) which were key:value files, and were easily grepable and fixable, and were part of the daily backups, so nothing could get lost, and database problems could be fixed easily.
I believe the system is still in use today at that company (though I've long since left), with the same name I gave the tool (the 'ASAP' system).
It worked well.. so well, other departments wanted me to make them one too, which I did for them easily enough. As it turns out, many departments have similar needs for such a system, where they are basically a 'problems in/solutions out' based department.
HTH.
Yeah, so've I. But what's the point? It's not maintainable over any real length of time. Personally, I prefer having a life outside of work, and that's never going to happen when you work that hard. And, what are the rewards for working stupid hours? Stress? Fatigue? More work? Effective pay cut?
In my experience, and observation of those around me, it's really hard increasing a 40 hour week to 50-55 hours. Adding 12 hours probably only adds a further 8-10 of real work. Beyond that it gets easier as most people are then unable to maintain a life outside work too. However, adding 10 hours more probably only adds a max of 5 hours real work, and it's gets worse as the hours pile up. Tired people are slow, mistake-prone and unproductive. Furthermore, once social life outside work stops, people start getting the social contact they need at work. They stop for more short chats, joke around more, etc. It's great for the work environment and back-slapping cliques, but it's not good for productivity.
What do you do? Work to live, or live to work? Do you work ridiculous hours just to make somebody else rich, or do you have your own business? Sorry, but this whole macho "I work more hours than you" routine is just stupid. It doesn't garner any respect from me - it means you have no life and are probably somebody else's whore.
Hell, you're new at this job - do you know if the last person quit because of insane expectations like this?
Thanks for the reply. The answer here is yes - he is still with the company, but in another capacity now. He got burnt out by the incessant requests, and the sheer volume of work. The department used to be 5 people (which I admit is wayyy too many), and it got whittled down to just him. Now, I'm in his position. I'm getting the hang of pushing off project work, but I don't have enough time in the day for the day-to-day stuff, so I'm just getting deeper and deeper under the muck.
*sigh*
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
Good source of CHEAP whiteboards - Lumberyards sell a 4x8-foot panel of glossy wall covering material called "tile board". It comes in some disgustingly bad imitations of tile, but also in a plain white often used in commercial kitchens. It's not quite as sturdy as commercial whiteboards, but for $20 a sheet you can afford to replace it every few years.
I understand priorities; but changing a company's culture (as this person will need to do to be successful) is a difficult task. It's not about prioritizing: it's about changing the process. We (I.T.) struggle with it so much at my place of work. Trying to get upper management to work with us on setting priorities and sticking to them is terribly difficult when the owner and associated YES!-people have "shiny-thing" syndrome.
Injecting structure into a process that for the last 20 years has had little formality is (IMHO) a gargantuan task...
this response is good as far as it goes, but what if you are the boss?
a former manager of mine let me in on his favorite response: tell them just what it will cost.
"OK, i can do that. however, if i do that now, as you request, it will require [# of people] about [period of time] to address properly. that means [x], [y] and [z] projects will slide b/c there aren't enough appropriate resources, the ramifications of which are 1, 2 and 3. this puts me in conflict w/ [manager 1], [manager 2] and [manager 3], all of whom were waiting for [period of time] until this is done. perhaps we should all of us should discuss this so my staff's allocation can be budgeted more effectively."
more often than not, the querant cannot take on one or more of [manager 1], [manager 2] or [manager 3] and it addresses about 90-95% of the issues that cropped up. the remainder of the time however, a discussion was needed and sometimes, the querant's issue was addressed.
this means that you absolutely have to have that information at your fingertips, if not at the tip of your tongue.
ed
I don't get overtime. I'm on salary.
This is a very common misconception. It doesn't matter if you're on salary. It only matters if you're exempt or not. The kicker is that your employer doesn't get to choose whether you're exempt or not. The federal government does. Being a salaried employee is only one step of many, many steps that need to be taken so an employee doesn't get overtime. I've got a LOT more information, if anybody would like it. I'm currently involved in a lawsuit where I'm suing my former employer for unpaid overtime, willful violation of the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act), and retaliatory action (wrongful termination). If all goes well, I could end up fairly well-to-do.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
PS If anyone knows an OSS MS Project replacement that can do all this stuff, please speak up. I've been dying to replace it for ages, but it's a really good fit for this particular problem space.
Ever tried the OpenOffice Project Management? I personally haven't used it, per se, but I played around with it, and it seems very similar to MS Project.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
I've got a LOT more information, if anybody would like it.
I'm not at home right now, but here are the links for some of the easier-to-find information:
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as Amended (PDF)
Regulations from the Department of Labor (DOL) about certain portions of the FLSA
I'm too lazy to do any real searching, but if anybody would like specific links, I can send them to you. Send me an e-mail, netadm2000@hotmail.com.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Right now, in jobs like this, it's learning who you can blow off and who you can't, who you can string along and who you can't - lots of people will just not say anything, and some people will bitch all the time. Those are the ones that get their stuff taken care of. It's the only way to do it. In this case, the timid get blown off. It's a horrible thing to do, some of the nicest people being ignored because they are not being difficult.
I agree with everything you said except that paragraph. When you think of what you're doing as "blowing people off" then you're already justifying bad behavior and setting yourself up for serious problems.
If a vital piece of content from the CFO has to go up on the web site today then it doesn't matter if the the CFO is a shrinking violet afraid to bother the busy webmaster. You can blow him off and defrag your whiny supervisor's hard drive instead, but the consequences aren't going to be pleasant for anyone. Sometimes you've got to take a little heat today in order to avoid being burned at the stake tomorrow.
Some projects really are inherently more important than others. It's up to a responsible employee to understand as best they can what's going on, and it's up to their supervisors to keep them informed. Sadly, most organizations have absolutely horrible internal communication.
In a well managed organization priorities are understood and documented, so it's not you saying no - it's The Rules that say no. And if you can build enough flexibility into the rules to accomdate special situations then all the better. But remember that every poorly chosen exception will weaken your ability to stand firm in the future.
10 years of experience in IT says: If you're working in IT right now, thank your lucky stars. Don't rock the boat. Realize that you could be replaced in a heartbeat. However, take whatever support you can get. If you're working for a good company then you're set. If you're working at the typical company that's shooting themselves in the foot because they don't get IT... you're screwed. If that's the case, then your only protection is your boss. As a company employee, your job is to follow orders. Anything else will amount to painting a bull's eye on your forehead. When you get hired as a regular employee you instantly lose your voice. You aren't a decision maker. You have no "juice" to make the decisions stick. Never say "no." You can't afford the grief. Don't try to change a broken company. Keep your head down and fly under the radar. Let your micromanaging boss dictate EXACTLY how he wants the job done. Then follow it to the letter, putting the responsiblity back on his shoulders, not yours. Don't fall into the trap of having 50 bosses because you've become the company's IT whipping boy/slave. Never volunteer for something outside the scope of your job description and training. Don't use work to learn. Set up a testbed environment at home and learn there. You'll have more freedom to do it right. Don't use free software for solutions. Make your company pay for it. It's good fiscal training for them. They need to learn the real cost of IT. Beige boxes are not servers. Never use Linux without a support contract for every installation. Learn what a properly deployed Data Center looks like: clean cabling, everything's racked, no beige boxes, only servers, UPS, dedicated air conditioning, physical security/cipher locks on the door, etc. Make the company PAY for training/certifications before attempting to work on the related project. That said, if you want a voice, be a consultant. Consultants come from the outside and are hired for their expert opinion. It's a fundamentally different experience. You design it, implement it, and train SOMEONE ELSE to run it. Or you could run it yourself on a part-time, outsourced basis. If you can't be a consultant, keep your head down. Create a priority list and get your boss' agreement. Make the priority list fit what's important to the company as a whole. Create a task list and task submission procedure/website/database/whatever. Don't get sucked in when someone says it will take a second and it ends up taking 3 hours. Spend 5 minutes on their request if they won't submit a task request. If it takes longer than that, tell them you will submit the request for them since you know what the details are now. Always try to offer workarounds until you can officially get around to working on it. NEVER GIVE A PROMISE OF WHEN IT WILL BE DONE. Let the user specify the priority level of their request. HOWEVER, TREAT THAT PRIORITY LEVEL AS SEPARATE FROM THE COMPANY-WIDE PRIORITY LEVEL THAT YOU WILL ASSIGN YOURSELF. This is CRITICAL. This lets the user know you will respect the priority of their request WITH RESPECT TO THE OTHER TASKS THEY HAVE SUBMITTED. It might be the top thing on his plate but if the server's down, nobody can work. YOUR BOSS IS YOUR ONLY PROTECTION. He's the only one you can't avoid completely if necessary. If he's out to get you, look for another job immediately. If he's good, you can rely on him to defend you and not undercut your decisions. He travels in policical circles you don't. Take advantage of his unique perspective. You're in the trenches. He can see poliitical things coming you won't. Don't stay too long at a bad company. Don't get burned out. There is a right way to do IT. Most companies don't get it. Be aware of the many traps IT people walk into. Be aware that the fear of technology people have will probably be the main thing people will use against you (sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly). EVALUATE YOUR COMPANY'S LEVEL OF IT QUALITY. Assess the company you're at right now and compare it against any company you want to get hired at. I've found that the information you can get before you get hired gives you just as accurate of a picture of a company's IT quality as the dirt you get after you get hired. Contact me if you want help doing this. I made a spreadsheet to do just that.
He said he realizes that, but I'm not getting another warm body until at least 'Next Spring'.
If his realization translates into reasonable expectations, it may not be too bad if you can get into the right mindframe for it.
Part of the problem is a natural psychological need for the closure of having ticked off all of the TODOs on Friday afternoon.
You're in a situation where the TODOs will never all be ticked off. Triage is necessary. Your employer has acknowledged that IT is understaffed. Now it has to acknowledge that the consequence of that is that sometimes, only the absolutely esential will get done (and that might even be late). They might as well not even bother mentioning any 'Gee it would be nice if...' projects 'cause they don't stand a chance until at least 'Next Spring'.
If they are willing to recognize the above as the natural consequence of the (perhaps unavoidable) short staffing and not try to make you do the work of ten, it can be OK.
In order for it to be OK, you'll need to kudge when to go home based on something other than completing a reasonably sized TODO list. In that process you (and the management) will have to realize that too many too long days will not get the work done, it will only result in you operating at half speed with many errors you wouldn't normally make. Trying to push through past that will only make it worse until you start to make negative progress and burn out. Working a sane number of hours and developing a feel for where the least time spent yields the biggest payoffs will help.
The above depends on management as ell. If they are able and willing to see that for what it is, and value your contribution towards getting through a difficult time, it may be well worth it. Do you believe that when the crunch time has passed that they will reward you properly for that value? Do you believe that the crunch will ever be over? Do you believe that the crunch is real (as opposed to being the result of penny pinching)?
The answers to those questions will guide your decisions. If you answered no to any of them, polish up your resume and get it out there (quietly). As unpleasant as the job might be, since you are currently paying the bills, you can be a bit choosier about your next employer.
When I last worked for a large law firm, our boss couldn't say "NO" to any request, no matter how difficult or insane. If they want it done in a short amount of time, we have to work 80+ hour work weeks for no extra pay to get it done. I couldn't do that because I have a family that needs me at home, and a son who needs a babysitter and the babysitter won't work extra hours so someone has to pick him up on time. My wife works as an LPN and has long hour days, so if I worked long hours there would be nobody to pick up our son from the babysitter.
Many tasks were just beyond my talent, like creating reoccuring dates in a calendar program which nobody else had any ideas how to do. I even asked on the Experts Exchange and got no results. But, they say, Outlook can do it, so it must be easy to do.
Also how can I get work done when every day they keep making changes to the program and the way it should look? I make all their changes, and then someone says "It is not intuitive" so they re-arrange it several more times until everyone is happy. Whatever happened to having IT making the UI and the way it should look? I would be happier if everyone got into a meeting, decicde how it should look, let me code that, and if they decide to change their minds later don't make the UI changes until the next version comes out.
What really got me is people promoted to management who have no idea how IT works, but they have final say over IT tasks and projects. I had one woman who told me to change the name of something she saw in a database to something else. I tried to tell her that it is a database column and that changing it means changing all the queries and stored procedures and triggers associated with it. She had no idea what column meant, even if she did claim to be an Excel expert. So my boss had me use "Pieces of information" instead, and then she got mad that I was "dumbing it down" for her. I told her that I can change the labels that name it, and descriptions to it, but she wanted the column name changed. So after changing anything that touched that column name, she decides to change it again! She had no idea of all the extra work she was creating for us. She also had no idea why it was taking so long to change, as she only took 15 minutes to write the email about it.
Also other departments bashed IT at every chance they got with no punishment. We couldn't say anything back, even if they cussed at us. Why do people get so emotional over computers and programs anyway? It is just a tool to use, and bashing the IT department won't get their problems solved any quicker. We're doing our best, and are overworked, and underpaid, but they treat us like sub-human creatures not human beings.
Also at first signs of a profit loss, IT people are almost always first to be laid off. Shouldn't they lay off the people who made the mistakes which lead to the profit loss? Blame accounting for not noticing the trend that sales were down. Blame marketing for not marketing the product right. Blame sales for losing customers. Blame management for not doing their jobs right. Just don't blame the people who keep on running those computers for you so you can get your jobs done.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
http://www.trinet.com/HR_resources/HR_Library/HR_l ibrary.htm
California only recently recognized certain computer professionals as being exempt from overtime pay. In September 2000, California created an overtime exemption for computer professionals, one which is more stringent than the federal standard-and, accordingly, California employers must follow the state standard. Many states do not have such a standard, despite the nation-wide explosion in technology positions!
In California, a computer professional is exempt from overtime pay if he/she is primarily engaged in work that is intellectual or creative, requires the exercise of discretion and independent judgment, and is highly skilled and proficient in the theoretical and practical application of highly specialized information/computer systems analysis, programming, and software engineering. The primary duties of the employee must consist of at least one of the following
* The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures including consulting with users to determine hardware, software, or system specifications.
* The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications.
* The documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to the design of software or hardware for computer operating systems.
* Lastly, the employee must be paid at least $41 per hour. This does not translate to a corresponding annual or monthly salary; exempt computer professionals must be paid hourly. For example, if the employee works ten hours in a day, he/she must be paid at least $41 for those ten hours-but the employer doesn't have to pay overtime for the "additional" two hours.
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
Here is a quick way to give yourself more time during the day. I used this at Apple, NASA and JavaSoft, and it REALLY WORKS.
Get in to work early. Seriously. If you can get in at 7:AM, then you can update your calendar and already have a LOT of work done before the teeming masses get in around 9:30.
The morning hours are absolutely the most productive of the day. It may take a week or so to get used to getting up early, but once you do, you will really find you can do a LOT more work.
Good luck!
- xtian
"What's that watermelon doing there?" - Jersey