When to Say No to Things at Work

Early in my career, I asked one of my task leads for advice on how to advance. He told me that, for the first five to ten years of your career, you should say yes. To everything. You should say yes so much that you’ll want to throw up from saying yes. Agree to the ask with a smile on your face and a twinkle in your eye.

Although colorfully phrased, his point was that the experience you gain from being involved with a plethora of different tasks is invaluable for your career growth. Looking back, I agree with him—with one caveat. You should say yes as long as you don’t compromise your values by doing so. I’m mindful of the recent Goldman Sachs work survey, where employees expressed their distress and discomfort with an established system that my generation never thought to question. And that’s only one example. Think of how different the last year would have been if no one had bothered to speak up.

My former task lead went on to say that, once you achieve a certain career threshold, you need to shift from saying yes to saying no. And, if you thought saying yes was hard, he cautioned, it’s nothing compared with the difficulty of saying no. I didn’t appreciate this at the time. “Ha,” I thought. “Easy for you to say, boss. I can’t wait to start saying no.”

The Difficulty of Saying No

He was right, of course. Saying no remains an ongoing challenge for many of us—personally as well as professionally. I will admit that it is easier to say no under certain circumstances, namely:

• When you are in a leadership role. You can say yes to a task and then promptly delegate the details of execution to a team member.

• When you are exceptional at what you do. This doesn’t mean (necessarily) that you are a “brilliant jerk.” It simply means that you are good enough at your job that people are willing to put up with your—er—eccentricities. In other words, you’ve built trust with colleagues that lets you get away with doing things “your way” (maybe that’s flexibility in your working hours, freedom to experiment with an unconventional leadership style, the ability to pick your team or projects, etc.)

OK, but assuming you’re not in one of those situations, what can you do? Chances are slim that you don’t have to answer to SOMEONE—if not your boss, then your customers or your shareholders. And, if you said yes to everything, then you wouldn’t get anything done. Recognizing that we’re getting paid to do some things that we’d rather not complete, how do you even know when to say no?

When to Say No

Consider the intellectual capital, skills, experience, and expertise that you possess as a more seasoned knowledge worker as your “product.” As a product manager, you recognize the importance of having a vision and a roadmap for your product.

In this example, your product vision is your personal mission statement. This mission statement represents the guiding principles that inform the future development of your product. In times of indecision, you’ll return to these values to help you make decisions about how to move forward. Just as you shouldn’t consider implementing a feature that does not align with your product vision—no matter what your customers say—no career objective is worth compromising your personal mission statement.

To continue with the product management analogy, your objectives and key results constitute your quarterly product roadmap. When deciding how to spend your time at work, consider whether the ask helps you make progress against your OKRs. Ideally, you’ve discussed these OKRs with your manager, and these OKRs have been designed to maximize not only your contribution but also business growth. That way, when that new collateral duty assignment comes up or the opportunity arises to organize the monthly all hands meeting (again), you can point to the career objectives you’ve discussed and explain that this task doesn’t fit in amongst the higher business value objectives you are pursuing. In these instances, I’d recommend offering a solution—my go to is usually the offer to train a replacement who would be excited for that exposure and skill building opportunity.

I’ll caution that this strategy doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you need to read the room—you can pretty much tell when your boss/the business needs urgent help, regardless of your carefully crafted action plan. At those times, you do what you need to do. But, those times should be rare. You should be returning to your OKRs daily to understand what work you should be prioritizing and what items can wait a little longer to complete. This method can help cut through the chaos to zero in on the high priority tasks that require your attention and yours alone. It’s the only way to make meaningful progress against your OKRs and help you in your journey to becoming an employee that contributes exceptionally to the business.