How do you sincerely ask people for their ideas, when so much is arrayed against doing anything about them? There are so many competing priorities already. Fresh ideas are great, but often people don’t realize how much effort it takes to get stuff done…and the team can barely keep up with the current demands, let alone take on more.
Sound familiar?
A leader I was coaching recently told me of the struggle she had with a recent new hire. Ashima’s new employee was full of ideas. Every day they were messaging Ashima with suggestions based on what they were learning through their onboarding journey. However, Ashima was getting uneasy as she heard herself again and again quashing these new ideas.
For the most part, the ideas weren’t bad, they just didn’t fit with current team priorities. But Ashima could see the enthusiasm in her new hire and didn’t want to stifle that energy with constant push-back of their suggestions.
Why We Say ‘No’
It is often easier to say no than to explore new ideas, as change takes work.
Typically, there are three reasons why busy managers say ‘No’ to new ideas from their teams:
- Resource Constraints: “We are already too busy”
- Goal Alignment: “That’s not our job”
- Legacy Thinking: “That doesn’t work here”
Many years ago, very early in my career, I had a short-term contract in the payroll department of a rail operator in the United Kingdom. I came into work one day and the head of payroll gave me a printout of a spreadsheet containing vehicle information for all of the staff that had company cars. She gave me another page of hand-written calculations that used the vehicle odometer reading and engine size to calculate the fringe benefit tax for each employee. She asked that I go through the spreadsheet one line at a time to complete the calculations for each employee and enter the result in the empty cell at the end.
The department had only recently been given new computers – their first ever (yes, it was that long ago!) and they were still learning how to use them. I pointed out that our new computers had Microsoft Excel installed, and that I could easily enter the calculations into Excel such that the entire list could be completed in seconds…not just this year but every year. However, the head of payroll said “That isn’t how we do it” and restated her instructions to use a calculator to go through the list manually. I pointed out that it would likely take me all week to do it this way, and she said “Yes, that is typically how long it takes”1.
I enjoy sharing this story, as it is an extreme example of how the automatic rejection of new ideas can lead to significant productivity losses (in this case the lost opportunity for significant productivity gains)2.
Understanding Change Risk
The Payroll Manager was reticent to agree to a change in her department. Change presents risk. We are naturally change-adverse. Why risk breaking that which is already working?
Businesses today operate in an environment of sustained change. The average tenure for a company in the S&P 500 index was 61 years in 1958; now it is less than 18 and shrinking3. Navigating change is fundamental to every successful business.
However, change can be disruptive. If the risk of not allowing change is existential, the risk of allowing too much change is similarly destructive.
Business schools used to teach change management as a set of practices applied in a time-bound fashion in response to top-down initiatives. Many still do. But this fails to acknowledge that in our information age, the business environment is faced with continuous drivers of change.
The shift to agile software development provides a better way of managing change across an organization. The Agile Manifesto values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and responding to change over following a plan. What this so brilliantly recognizes is that to successfully navigate in a dynamic environment, people must be empowered with clear goals, clear lines of communication, and the resources needed for success4.
How To Say ‘Yes’
Google is famous for giving staff time to work on side projects. A number of core products at Google were once side projects5. This was top of mind for me the day that a member of my team showed up with a bunch of recording equipment and said he was going to start a new Google podcast. Although our team partnered closely with the sales organization, we had no marketing remit, no media resources, and no immediate reason to create a new podcast.
My instinct was to immediately quash the idea, as there were many reasons why it might not be in the best interests of the team: it didn’t align with team objectives, we were already pretty slammed, and I doubted we could get the needed buy-in from our team’s key leadership folks. Then it occurred to me that as a leader at Google, I should try to find a way to say ‘yes’. Although it seemed like a minute or two had passed, it was only a couple of seconds later that I said ‘Great idea! I’d like to learn more about your thoughts.” I then shared the obstacles that would need to be addressed.
To his enormous credit, Craig6 took on the challenge. Over the coming weeks, Craig connected the podcast to the team’s mission, we worked together to get the buy-in needed, and the result was the creation of a very valuable asset that wouldn’t have been possible had I followed my first instinct and said ‘no’.
The takeaway I’d like busy leaders to have from my story is: Try to say yes instead of no. Saying ‘no’ may easier and less disruptive, but over time will surely kill any enthusiasm your team members bring to their jobs.
Saying ‘yes’ is hard. It requires that folks have a solid understanding of the team’s mission, goals, and priorities. Your first step as a leader who wants to say ‘yes’ more often is to make sure these are clearly articulated and reinforced on a regular basis.
Secondly, provide some structure. My advice for the leader at the start of this article (Ashima), was to have her new hire note down all of her ideas, write 1-2 sentences describing each, the benefit to the team or business, and a high-level estimate of the effort needed to complete them. Then at the end of her first month in the role they could go through the list together and identify what might be worth exploring further.
In my example with Craig, I voiced encouragement for the idea, then shared the obstacles I foresaw. I asked him to come back with a plan outline, and I provided support in some key areas, such as identifying the necessary sponsors and securing their buy-in. Not only did I reiterate the goals and priorities for our team, I clearly described the success conditions for the new podcast that would ensure it delivered the value needed for our team.
In summary, the tools needed to allow you to say ‘yes’ more often are:
- Provide structure
- Clearly define success conditions
- Share obstacles and empower to help overcome
Your goal shouldn’t be to say ‘yes’ every time, however, you should challenge yourself every time to see if ‘yes’ might be possible, and you should work hard to ensure everybody in the team gets to enjoy their share of ‘yeses’ from their boss.
Footnotes
- In case you are interested to know what I did: I went ahead and used Excel instead of the calculator. I added a VB Script to print out the page of calculations for each vehicle to make the Payroll Manager think I did it all manually. With the time left over that week, I created a countdown timer in Excel using VB Script to show how long I had left on that contract. ↩︎
- Of course, the payroll manager might have good reasons for being reticent to embrace having a temporary staff member create a new process or tool that no-one else on the team knows how to use, however given the recent deployment of computers loaded with Excel on every desk, I’d argue she was just behind the curve on managing the transition to the new tools available, which was also the fault of the IT modernization program. ↩︎
- McKinsey on Finance December 2023 ↩︎
- In another yet-to-be-published blog I’ll talk about this shift in more detail, suffice to say that the old way of managing businesses per traditional management consulting (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor) needs to give way to systems of empowerment (see General Stanley McChrystal https://www.mcchrystalgroup.com/capabilities/team-of-teams). ↩︎
- At Google it was called ‘20% time’, however in my many years there I found it infrequently accommodated. ↩︎
- Not his real name. His real name is Chris Hood and he is an excellent speaker & strategist. I recommend his books available at www.chrishood.com ↩︎
