Getting to “No.”
Getting to Yes is one of those classic business books. First published 40 years ago, it remains a valuable resource for thinking about negotiation, like understanding the interests behind each party’s position and keeping criteria objective. This is all fine and good, but what about saying no? Or rather, making sure you’re only saying yes to the right things?
Saying “no” has never come naturally to me. As an optimist, general enthusiast, and someone who likes both getting to know people and trying new things, I bring a say yes! attitude to my work and life. This is mostly a good thing—it means I approach everything with an open mind and a belief in myself and others. While this practice has brought a lot of good things my way, it has also been known to get me into trouble from time to time. Especially at work, where saying “yes” to a project affects the six other people on my team.
This summer will mark my 13th year at A Hundred Monkeys. Which means I’ve had a few thousand introductory calls with people who may want to work with us. I’ve pitched a lot of projects. And historically, about 50% of our proposals become real projects. You know what they say about hindsight? It’s true. Just because a potential client wanted to hire us, I shouldn’t have always agreed!
Getting to “no” starts with unlearning a lot of bad habits that come from our demanding culture: Productivity above all else! Maximizing growth without considering the externalized costs! Everything is a competition! Succeed or die! Once you realize how untenable most of the working world really is, it’s hard to unsee it. And once you experience clients who really get it, who appreciate your process and what you do, who feel like partners every step of the way, it becomes downright impossible to go back to trying to impress people who you can already tell won’t treat you well.
We used to spend most of our prospective project calls talking about our process. Don’t get my wrong, process is incredibly important to us—but we already include the details of our approach in our proposal. Using precious minutes to summarize something that’s much easier to understand on paper is a waste of everyone’s time. Now, we use most of the call to discuss our values—and to make sure they’re shared. By talking directly about what’s important to us and how we see our role, we also get an understanding of how our potential clients see the project, the relationship, and the work itself.
Being very clear about who we are, how we think about our work, and what our goals are means we’re giving people the information they need to make sure they’re saying yes to the right things. It has the added effect of making it clear which clients are not right for us. By exchanging valuable information during these conversations, we can all be more confident in what we’re signing up for.
Like anything, it takes practice. The more experience you have saying thank you, but no thank you, the easier it becomes. It helps if you share the reason behind your decision, so they know it isn’t personal. Maybe you have different priorities, or don’t feel like there’s enough time to really do the project well. Maybe there are too many stakeholders, or you won’t have access to the decision maker. Once you can define what’s most important to you and your process, it makes it easier to see where there’s a misalignment of values.
I don’t think of “no” as a rejection any longer. Instead, I see it as an act of creating and respecting boundaries. If saying “no” has been a challenge for you, here’s a shortcut: imagine, instead, that you’re saying “Yes, I won’t!”
