Whether you’re at a consultancy or a product company, from development to management, you have a hidden superpower: saying no. See, once you make it out of the very beginning of entry-level proficiency in your career, there’s an important fact people often forget: you are getting paid for your expertise.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing the company or client is paying you purely for your productivity. But stop and think. What exactly IS it that’s making you more productive? It’s not training your muscles like an athlete (outliers like learning Vim shortcuts aside). It’s taking what you’ve learned and applying it to make better things or do it faster. This is really just the manifestation of your expertise as productivity. Is it the ONLY way it’s manifested though?
What do you mean, crazy internet person??
When you break down the process of completing a task, you realize you’re making lots of small decisions. You are actually evaluating good vs. bad ideas all the time, just at a small scale. If you’re only applying that expertise to the task in front of you, though, you’re limiting the value you can contribute. A lot of work went into defining something that needs to be done before it ever got in front of you. Often this is done by people who have vastly different expertise than you do. If you take every task that gets to you and do it without question, you’ll start noticing some unfortunate side effects.
Side effects?! I HATE those!
Sometimes they’re not that bad, like wasting time on something you’re pretty sure won’t pan out to be useful. But sometimes they’re catastrophic, like saddling an application with technical debt that bleeds time and resources for years to come. Personally, I find this to be an awful feeling, since I like to take pride in the work I’ve accomplished. If reading that on the side of the pill bottle doesn’t scare you off, however, the effects can be more concrete. These types of problems can often look like they’re your fault, even if they weren’t. This can mean bad performance reviews, lost clients, or even losing your job. Even if it’s not obvious at first, these types of things can cause your team to perform subtly worse than it could. In the long run, that can slow your company and career down.
Ahhh I’m panicking! What do I do??
It would be nice if you could just tell people no every time you heard an idea you thought wasn’t good, and then cackle maniacally and walk away. Maybe bring a giant buzzer and any time someone tries to ask or assign work you think is dumb, mash the button and teach ’em a lesson! It turns out, however, that getting your opinions listened to effectively is not always straightforward, and is highly specific to the situation. I’ll try to give some general tips, but I encourage you to experiment for yourself and find a way that works for you!
Doesn’t agile project management solve this for me?
In a way you’re right! If you’re in a well-functioning agile process, it’s probably the most straightforward. Speak up during refinements! That’s right: that means you have to pay close attention and read and contemplate each story so you can contribute. You’ll reap the benefits, I swear! If you’re finding a lot of stories are so far off base that it’s not a simple correction, try to find a way to get involved in the story-writing process earlier. It’s possible not enough technical feasibility is going into stories before they’re put in front of the whole team. This can result in stories ending up in the backlog that you shouldn’t even attempt, regardless of how.
I have demanding clients.
If you’re in a client-facing situation, it can be much trickier. Clients will often show up with a shoestring budget and a dream to replace Twitter. They’re paying the bills, and they want their features. It can be difficult to explain that something is a bad idea. My best tip for this is to try to frame something in terms of what it will cost when you consider everything. Yes, you can get more features done if you skip tests… but you’ll end up paying 10 times that cost down the line, with slower new features and production bugs. If you can find a good way to frame the true cost of something (or the true risk as it often is), you’ve done the best you can.
No agile for me — I’m just chasing waterfalls
In the case of directions coming from managers in a product organization… that might be the trickiest of all. Finding a way to push back on management and explain that something is a bad idea can seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb. Sometimes that might actually be true, but other times you just need to be persistent or creative. Try asking lots of questions about risks until someone gets nervous. Maybe try establishing skip-level meetings where higher-level managers are available for you to surface risks. Remember the key is to be persistent without making people too upset! If people are extremely annoyed or feel disrespected, they are less likely to listen to you.
That was a lot. Can I just go with the buzzer?
Unfortunately, it can be hard sometimes to get in a position where you feel confident saying no. Team dynamics, company culture, and project situations play a big role. The efforts are well worth it if you pull it off though! Being able to help steer the product direction even a little bit is a big deal. You can avoid doing time-wasting work and help mitigate more risk for a project. On a personal level, you might even find you’re getting more satisfaction out of doing more worthwhile and quality work!