Leadership: When "No" Is More Important Than "Yes"

Busy-ness, Priorities, and "No"

I'm in the middle of a diagnostic where the key issue is that "we can't get things done because everything is important."

There are stated priorities. These can shift more than once during the course of a single day because of a customer or managerial demand. The result?

People scrambling to move resources from one initiative to another in a situation with limited resources:

1. If something is on the priority list--regardless of its rank--it is always in play. If someone yells loud enough for #10, #2 will get nudged aside.

2. Everyone is energetic and committed to "doing it all." But trying to do it all leads to doing nothing well or methodically.

What Needs To Happen?

People need to know what not to do.

In this case, effective leadership is a firm negative. Items need to be physically removed from the "important"  list with the directive, "No, don't do that."

Anything remotely resembling interest in a low priority item by the leader will be interpreted as permission to continue doing that which is self-defeating.

"Yes" will encourage diverse input, good ideas, and enthusiasm.

"No" is the way effective leaders give direction when there are competing demands.

Note: Because of the competing demands of this week's project, I decided not to respond to comments until tonight. Looking forward to returning to the conversation.

photo source: latimesblogs.latimes.com/

Comments

[Katie Konrath]

I think the ability to say no is extremely important. I remember one instance where the to do list kept getting longer and longer because my boss couldn't say no to anything.

B2B and B2C, let's do both. Let's see about testing in Canada before we get established in the US. Let's go after thousands of leads, even ones that aren't suited to us. Let's pair up with another company that has almost nothing to do with what we do!

It was awful. There was already too much to do on the priority list, but the overall to-do list kept on expanding and expanding, and eventually distracting us from getting anything done.

[Steve Roesler]

Katie,

Isn't it amazing how "more" actually leads to accomplishing "less"?!

[Jim Stroup]

Steve,

I am convinced that this is a major problem that grows with seniority. In fact, Peter Drucker spent a good part of his practice forcing senior executives to confront the fact that they suffered from it, and teaching them the discipline to reduce it. Henry Mintzberg also came to be known for his work in this area.

This is the difference between staff and command. One is altruistically indiscriminate, the other is relentlessly selfish (in an organizational sense) about focusing on the key issues that drive the others. It's an operational form of Occam's Razor, something truly effective executives have learned to steel themselves to do.

[Steve Roesler]

Jim,

Thank you for the reminder regarding the work of Drucker and others. I do recall his firm stand in this area.

Interestingly--during some diagnostic interviews pertaining to this specific situation--one of the managers brought up the military model as his model for a solution to the ongoing situation. In this particular instance it will require a huge change on the part of the leader to what you accurately describe as being (organizationally) relentlessly selfish.

Perhaps if I invoke the Drucker citations it will help the cause.