Why "No" In Project Management Is a Good Thing
When you’re in charge of a company’s engineering, like a head of engineering or product, or any other role where you have to make decisions regarding what the team is going to work on, you have to often say no. This often causes disputes, but saying no is actually a good thing, for multiple reasons:
First, it ensures that there aren’t too many balls in the air, because they will be dropped. Better to complete five things than leave ten half-done.
Second, when you have a bunch of things competing for your attention, you identify what is the most important. Sure we need to improve the UX, improve the mobile app, work on scalability and reduce tech debt. Each of these, if you look at them individually as naive decision-makers tend to, count as critical. How will the company succeed if users have a bad experience, you might ask. But among all of them, which is the most important right now? Saying no redirects your focus to the most important thing, which is good. A competitive tournament like the Wimbledon causes the very best players to rise to the top. The ones who fell just short of the bar are excellent tennis players if you look at them individually. But there are others who are better. Similarly, the tasks you are saying no to may be important, just not the most important right now. Do you want Djokovic or Maxime Cressy?
Third, saying no reduces context-switching, which burns a lot of productivity. People don’t multitask. They unitask, stopping one thing and starting another. It’s like stopping and then restarting a heavy goods train — a lot of energy is lost in the process.
Fourth, saying no results in increased morale for the people actually doing the work (the engineers) because they have a sense of completion and achievement, not a sense of always being behind schedule, a sense of dissatisfaction, or even being made to feel they’re not good enough. Morale is critical — if you’re not treating it as a valuable resource and protecting it and optimising for it, your team members will emotionally disconnect from your company. Or have a transactional attitude towards your company. Or leave.
Fifth, saying no closes the door on some things for now, preventing fortnightly arguments about them, which sap both time and morale. If you’re not improving the UX right now, you stop debating the UX all the time.
Sixth, if you have ten things to do, and you pick two and complete them, and then ask yourself “What should we do now?” you may find that the most important thing to do now is different. This is good, since it means you’re doing what’s most important today, rather than what you thought some months ago as being most important.
These are all the reasons why saying no in project management is a good thing.