This Two-Word Phrase Turns Leaders Into Heroes
by Lisa Bodell for Forbes
As you head into the busy season, what’s your strategy for guarding your (and your team’s) time? How do you avoid the five-alarm fires that seem to erupt every time half the company is out of office? One of my most reliable tactics for managing emergencies is known simply as “yes…if.”
To illustrate, let’s say a colleague or another team asks for something costly or time-consuming. Resist the urge to automatically say “no, because we don’t have bandwidth for that.” Instead, try “yes…if we can pull from Marketing’s budget to explore and test this idea.”
Encourage your teams to try out “yes…if” when they want to say “no,” but aren’t sure if they should. For example, if another org requests something ad hoc from your team by end-of-day, empower them to respond with “yes…if my director agrees with this shift in priorities” or “yes…if you provide me with the data you need analyzed.” This approach also helps distribute the work more fairly as a mutual give-and-take.