Many years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with foreign supplier and we were discussing some of their capabilities. I asked if they could supply us with a 10 Ton Gantry Crane. There was some heated discussion in their native language all of which gave me the answer, "No". I was shocked when their interpreter uttered a weak " Yes". I asked are you sure? "Yes", he replied again. We showed up, no crane and 2 days of risky improvising eventually got us back on track. I was very upset because had they simply told us "No" we could have avoided the time, risk and hassle of having to make up a plan B on the fly.
As humans, we don't like to say No but when it is the right answer, it is the only answer that will do. I recently gave this advice to a client. I was working with them to untangle a series of delays and in working the root causes of the delays, it became apparent that they had been saying "Yes" to too many things. The end result was that they were incurring a series of delays and not getting what they needed to accomplish done. My advice to them was simple, learn to say No.
No, doesn't necessarily mean absolutely not. It may be a hard No but it also may be simply a statement that their are constraints or issues that need to be addressed before it can be a yes. It is extremely important that a No be acknowledged and resolved. I have seen plenty of examples where a group consensus is No and the boss gets one of the herd off to side and starts working on them. It usually starts with a pep talk and some cajoling until the time worn phrase "Come on, this really isn't that much work and the team really needs you to do this". This may seem like a victory but everyone loses. The credibility of any decision a team makes is lost, the person that is cornered into a Yes when they mean No feels isolated and 99% of the time the project suffers.
A better strategy is to understand the nature of the No. I don't mean existentially, I mean practically. Ask why and understand what conditions need to exist for the answer to be yes. Sometimes it's as simple as re-prioritizing and others it's adding resources but it is important to ensure that that the team works through the process to get to a 100% committed yes that they agree to accept accountability for. No, "We will do our bests". Work until the team gets to a 100% commitment.
A final word of warning. There may be team members that are not 100% committed and may try to circumvent the process by going to leadership with their "concerns". Do not allow this. This is very destructive behavior. Start by telling them they should not have walked out of the room without being 100% committed and then advise them that they need to reconvene the team and explain that they were not 100% committed to the answer and that more work needs to be done before they can be committed. If you do not do this, you ruin the integrity of the process and no decision has any staying power.
No comments:
Post a Comment