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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."
Is simply lay out the time. Say, "Yes i will do it, once i have this done as well as this" No need to say no, just show them that for you to say yes will require them to wait for it to get done an unreasonable amount of time. They complain? Then you may get staffed correctly soon enough:-p
Another thing you could do to limit the number of requests is to only accept work requests from authorized managers. So if John Smith wants you to install some software he will have to ask his supervisor to forward a request to you.
The right way is to propose and alternative.
Scenario 2
PHB says - "I want X done asap".
overworked IT engineer - "No problem, which one of A,B,C,D, .... W would you like me to hold off on while I do X ?"
PHB ... goes away and does not come back until it's more important that A...W
Scenario 2
Customer - "I have this way out idea that will really be cool to do !"
Overworked engineer saya - "Fantastic, you know, we have a procedure for new projects, go fill in the form and we'll prioritize it".
Customer goes away and forgets the crazy idea.
Most of the ways to deal with anyone it to give them your problem. If you do this then you filter most of the nonsense. The golden rule is to never say no but to "Prioritize"! No-one will ever complain that you don't do your job if you are "prioritizing!".
I've recently become development manager for one of our company's products. As such, it has taken a while to find my feet, both when interacting with sales & consulting internally, and when interacting with customers. I certainly erred on the side of saying yes too often, because I wasn't sure about saying no.
Not anymore. For me, it took mistakes, stress, and all sorts of complaints directed at myself or the company, whether or not it was my responsibility. It is this realisation that sometimes, I need to say no. People do get pissed off at you when you say no. But your job isn't to please people, it's to get a product out the door (well, for me it is, anyway).
So, you learn to say no when from the experience of getting a yes thrown back in your face.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Instead of taking the full weight of the decision, why don't you tell your manager that clients want A, but you already have B, C, D in the queue, and ask the manager to prioritize these items for you. Something will have to be delayed, maybe it will be client's current request, or maybe one of the things that were previously in the queue, but you won't be the one deciding what gets delayed.
.02c.
If you are in the position of power, then you should have enough power to make a decision without fear. If you are shaking in your boots, then shift the burden to the client by letting the client prioritize things for you. Obviously this is complicated if you have more than one client. Then you'd have to get them all in a room and have them talk it out.
The rule of thumb for power is that power should match your responsibility. That means, if you are, say, responsible for cleaning the floor, then you must be empowered to move things off the floor, to access cleaning supplies and so on. If you are a manager and it is your job to prioritize items and yet you are not empowered to say "NO", then something is terribly wrong, and perhaps, your project is going down the tubes anyway, and you should look for another job. Alternatively, you can just shut up and sort of roll with the punches and hope that clients will drown in the endless bureaucracy (let the thing that's holding you down hold your clients down as well) and eventually run out of steam. It really depends on the environment you work in.
Say "I'm inserting that into my prioritized queue of tasks to be done in slot #98, right behind fixing the mail server virus filters..." Your problem is you're letting people's new requests take too high a priority.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Seriously, this is basically all there is to it. Use whatever calendaring software you have to break down what you're doing on a daily or weekly basis, if not hourly. Even a recurring to-do list is good. The idea is to show that your time is not an infinite resource.
If you can sit down and say something like "I can make time for this project this month, but it will require moving back those security updates for a week, and the database migration for a few days. Also, we're running low on shared drive space and there's no budget to augment the servers, so to add this in, I'll have to put everyone on a harsher quota for the next few days (and delete your mp3s off your shared drive)," and show how your time is mapped, they will see why they can't reasonably expect you to take on more work.
You'll also be able to get more actual work done, because the mere act of organizing your regular activities will let you see ways to cluster them for more efficiency ("oh, while this disk image is copying, I can hit that next item on the list, replace the video cable on that secretary's computer so she'll stop holding my mail hostage"), etc.
Also, at the end of six months or a year, maybe you can use the resulting log as evidence that you need an assistant or a pay raise or both. It's also good for remembering what to put on your resume, if your small company decides to lay you off and replace you with two kids who just graduated and also happen to be related to the VPs...
Get off my launchpad!
given an appropriate allocation of time, money and resources.
:
There are a number of things that are key
1) agree with senior management on broad priorities
2) draw up a list of what needs to be done
3) re-order the list in terms of the agreed priorities
4) present the prioritised list to management, and have them agree to the priority
5) Give an honest indication of how far down the list you'll be able to get
Go off and do stuff, and report progress on the list and re-prioritise the list say once a week, with their input.
IF they are half way decent as a manager, they will rapidly understand to either accept the level of capability they have, OR accept the need to increase that level of capability to meet their performance expectations. If they can't arrive at conclusions similar to these, in general you should be looking to work elsewhere.
If they want X to be done, explain what is really needed to achieve X. If some or all of the pre-requisites, give a honest estimate of how that will impact their timelines.
Oh - and plan on, and only commit to, 35-40 hours of real work per week per person, otherwise you'll burn people out, AND have no spare capacity to surge to meet the occasional urgent deadlines.
Another thing that can help, is to help filter the crap out, by getting agreement from management for allocation of resources to issues.
No system is perfect, but if you can demonstrate an understanding of the businesses needs and priorities, and be up front, but constructive, about the implications of meeting those, you can often say no without really saying no.
Absolutely - it's really just a case of making people aware of the resource implications of what they want. I tend to work it along the lines of "Yes, no problem, we'll just need 21 man-days and a new baseline workstation for that". It allows you to say 'yes' without any 'but's. You get to be the positive one as it forces someone else to say 'no' if the resources can't be met :-)
-- Gaxx
I agree. I have used project management software, and even Excel, to show my plans and to define my workload. Years ago I was called to task by a corporate guy who came in to ream me for being several months late on a project. I pulled out my pert chats and showed him I was, in fact, on schedule. I was informed that my boss gave him different dates. My boss was fired 2 months later.
As the parent poster implied, use MS Project (or whatever project planning software you've got) and put everything you've got to do on the plan.
... hours per week. Either you'll get lots of overtime (if that's what you want), or they'll hire you an assistant.
;->
**Keep it maintained at all times** - it only takes a few minutes to maintain it once you've got it set up.
**Be realistic with your time estimates** - if you don't know how to build a firewall, then allow a lot of time to do it.
**Remember that you aren't productive 40 hours a week** - depending on your role, you'll probably only do productive work 30-80% of the time, and if you're the only techo guy in the shop I'm betting you'd be somewhere below 80% productive. Reading email, going to meetings, cigarette breaks - they all chew into your 40 hours per week. Once you decide how productive you truly are, factor it into the project plan by saying the resource (you!) is only e.g. 60% available.
Then, when someone comes up and asks you to manually install virus checkers on these 43 new PCs, put it in your project plan, show how every other task you've got blows out by 2 weeks and see if your boss is prepared to accept the delay.
If you're at a place where they pay for overtime, enter all your time estimates in hours and do a few "what if" scenarios on your resource allocation (i.e. you!) to show how long things will take if you work 30, 40, 50, 60,
Without a doubt, the best/only way to get out of a situation where you're overworked is to be extremely organised and able to show anyone at a moment's notice exactly how busy you are. Once your boss can see the true impact of giving you "just one more" task, in terms of the slippage that will impact other projects, you'll be amazed how that extra work will no longer be as important
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
My solution to this was to make a "to do" application.
If my colleague wants something done I tell him to put it on the to-do list with a priority rating.
I then work top down. That way he knows what I have / haven't done and what he's going to delay by wanting new things.
Managers should manage. I let him choose which work I'm doing next.
And I can't stress enough how well that appraoch works in a bigger company. Bump requests up to your manager and let him choose which you do next. It reduces your stress because you aren't trying to juggle a bunch of peoples feelings and with luck, if you are overworked, they will do something about it because they can see the situation rather than people bitching about you never doing their tasks when they think that their tasks are the only ones you have outstanding.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This is one of the basic rules of consulting (before there were IT consultants), and it applies as well to employees as independent contractors.
How to refuse work...
Never say "no" to a client, since you will lose the client. To refuse work, raise the cost until the client decides it is not worthwhile. It is not a problem to appear "expensive" so long as this is always related to "quality" and "performance" in the mind of the client. Perception is everything.
For an employee, the pressures are different ("do this or I fire your ass") but the trick is the same: make your boss responsible for the tradeoffs that too much work implies. Give him a choice: "OK, I can do this or that, which do you prefer?"
Don't complain about getting too much work. It's really a much, much better situation to be in than to have too little work, and you will often find that many "urgent" issues get relegated and finally abandoned when the boss actually has to make a choice.
Lastly, always appear to make the best effort you can, since what counts at the end of the day is not how you actually performed, but how people perceived your performance. Smile, agree, react quickly and professionally, work well with your colleagues, never blame others but be quick to take blame on yourself, and you will find that your boss / clients respect you and value you.
Personally I have not found project management software any use at all, software projects being far too chaotic (in the mathematical sense of being unpredictable due to complex interactions) to be planned. But in more operational work, scheduling tools are indeed very useful.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I second this.
Also, if you have multiple bosses asking for your time make them fight it out amongst themselfs (ie "Sorry Sam, but i'll be fully occupied with this project for John for the coming 2 weeks. Maybe you can talk to hime about it?"). It's majorly entertaining.
Additionaly i would like to address the Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it. thingie:
- Some people (for example, the "one specialist in a certain code base" or the "fireman of the company/department/group", or just anybody that's good at solving problems and is helpful) will be constantly interrupted and asked to "help me out with something for a moment" or "I can't get this to work, can you help me?" or "can you explain this to me?".
- Although this might at first make one feel good (you're "needed", you're "important"), it soon becomes to much and starts eating you your time like crazy - 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there, 20 minutes somewhere else soon adds up to a lot of time.
- Now, the problem with "helping others time" is that it's not in the budget. No mater how much usefull your helpfulnes is (and sometimes it's counter productive because it can breed a culture of dependency), you still have the same amount of project work to do (just less time to do it).
- That's were the "help others help themselfs" thing comes in. It's the single most efficient way i know of actually helping others while wasting the smallest possible amount of time.
The things to note with the "help others help themselfs" system:
- At first it will eat more of your time than just "doing it yourself". "Doing it yourself" will fix the problem faster but only this time around - the people you just helped don't actually learn anything from it and will come back again (and again and again) whenever the same or a similar problem pops-up (plus they won't be able to help others with that problem)
- Thus the gain in time for using the "help others help themselfs" system comes with recurring problems/questions/whatever.
- Also note that even when you teach people how to solve a problem, a lot of them still tend to come back to you to have you solve it for them. That's because for them it's easier and simpler to just get you to do it. To solve this, just make it harder to get your help for those you have already taught how to solve the problem (for example ask: "Have you tried what i told you last time?" "No" "Go and try it, if it doesn't work come back to me with it")
There is a lot more stuff about time management and avoiding overwork - however, this will help contain some of the "sneaky time wasting" stuff.
Keep a list of all assigned projects, whether on a web page for all to see, or on a whiteboard, and make damn sure everybody knows where it is. Get priorities assigned, not as in TOP but as in position on the list.
... body bags, medicine, ammunition, combat rations, fuel .... and the ensign got all huffy and backed down.
...
Here's a little story you might find enlightening, the importance of priorities in keeping requests under control. This is relevant, very relevant.
I worked with a guy who was an air force loadmaster in Vietnam, early 60s. He had some scut job at the main Saigon airbase. They used to extract carriage fees from shipments of steak and whiskey going up to the officers club at Cam Ranh Bay. One day, some ensign showed up, fresh as a daisy, said there were pallets going up to the club, and he was in charge of making sure they arrived intact, and demanded they be sent up on the next available plane. My friend had been in too long to give a shit about some wet behind the ears ensign, and furthermore, had the distinct attitude of What Are You Going To Do, Send Me To Vietnam? So he slapped a bunch of clipboards up on the counter, said fine, you tell me what cargo you want to take off, sir, and we'll see that your steak and whiskey gets up there right away sir. Now what will it be
That's the end of the relevant part of the story. Remember, make the job assigner decide not TOP priority, but where exactly on the list, so when other people complain, you can point to new jobs added above theirs. The goal is to get the suits hassling each other, not you. Don't argue with them. If they berate you, just say you need to know whose jobs to bump down the list. Be quiet and form, you need to know the positional priority.
OK, the rest of the story is more fun, not as relevant, but may help you to remember this trick.
The ensign demanded that someone stand guard over the pallets of steak and whiskey. My friend just sneered at him, Sir, you have a sidearm, why don't you use it? And the ensign did, he stood gaurd over the precious pallets for some time, until some crusty old chief, who had spit more sea water than the ensign had ever seen, showed up with a case of whiskey under one arm and a case of steaks under the other, slapped them down on the counter, and the pallets went out on the next flight.
There's a moral to that story to, but it's probably not a good idea to start taking bribes to shuffle your boss's priorities
Infuriate left and right
Yes and no. As another one put this would be a good way to work: Have a project manager assigned. All he does is to keep track of your departments assignments, timetables, deadlines, milestones etc.
;)
All requests go through him. Noone else. He should then get a clear picture of what they're asking, and then come to you to help you estimate the assignment.
If there is a "no", you should always give elaborate reason as to why (i.e. make the customer realize what a bad idea it is).
It's a good thing to do the estimate anyway, in case the customer just says, "I don't care, do it anyway!"...
The biggest mistake is to talk directly to the people that do the assignments. A lot of those people don't know how to say no, or have the customer realize that it isn't a great idea.
I've worked in such enviroments for at least 6 years. I was one of those who had a hard time saying no. After I got kids, it got a lot easier
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I told someone no, I wouldn't create a system that used a Social Security # for a login, and a badge number for a password... no no no. Had to do a sit down with my boss, their boss, and their boss... and I explained that 1) that information is definitely NOT secret, and 2) it was unethical to use information like that... it could compromise other aspects of the employees lives.
and I got fired... for "breach of ethics". apparently "pandering to a customer's silly whims and tantrums" is an article of ethics in that crowd.
meh
I'll try not to sound too much like a therapist.
Basically, no one has the right for any reason to violate your emotional and mental boundaries. Given this information, any employer who would expect you, the only IT employee, to work miracles on a budget with 70+ hour work weeks would either be insane, satan, or taking advantage of you.
In any of these cases in it not right. I assume you are salary which means you work whatever they tell you too. They can fire you because they feel like it. And basically, you owe them for giving you a job in such difficult financial and job market times.
Therefore, here is a practical solution. Explain to your customers, clients, employer and co-workers that you are one person doing the job of several. You are more than happy to get to their requests (which I can assume are typically easy user account resets, PC checks, LAN crawls) but to please be patient. And if you must tell them "No, I cannot do that." Be sure to add, "No, I cannot do that right now. I have too much work to do. Perhaps we can revisit this at a later date."
Keep in mind you do not want to upset them. So yelling "NO!!! GO AWAY!!!" as the BOFH would, while quite humurous, and honestly quite theraputic, would probably get you fired. You want them to be considerate of your time and your work so please be considerate of theirs (and it sounds like you are, otherwise you wouldn't be so willing to do the work and find it so hard to say "No.")
I hope this helps.
Rivendahl
... there is nothing that has not already been thought