Tech Writers Need to Learn to Say Yes. However …
June 17th, 2010 3 Comments
Our Sales Director phoned me up today and asked for help with some bid work that's coming up. I've already rearranged my plans for next week to help someone else with some other bid work, so I apologised and said no. As I was turning him down I was already feeling bad about it because I've made a point of telling people that tech writers should be involved in bid writing.
Then this evening I read this blog post by Mark Metcalfe: Tech Writers Need to Learn to Say Yes
Maybe if I'd read this I would have set out the options, rather than saying no. However, I worry that it's not quite as easy as Mark suggests. Very often requests for time come out of the blue and the start date is today. If you give a qualified yes, the person may hear what they want to hear - the yes - and conveniently forget the discussion of workload, cost and priorities. Often you are responsible to deliver work for several people at a similar managerial level and each of them thinks their work is the priority. Escalating to a more senior managerial level can be problematic because escalation generally has to happen through one of the managers concerned, who have little incentive to trouble their boss for arbitration.
So maybe, as well as learning to say yes more often, the tech writer needs to learn diplomacy and negotiation skills. Give a tentative yes to everybody and then get them to sort it out between them. Get everybody in a room if possible. Who's going to give way, because there's only so much you can do? So doing C means rescheduling A and B.
But if doing C is the best thing for the company then it would be crazy not to do it just because you'd already planned to work full-time on A and B.
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June 18th, 2010 at 10:02 am (#)
My team gets a LOT of these requests, and we end up being invovled in one way or another.
We do have some processes in place that give me visibility of requests that might be coming down the line, and for quite a while my answer was always No, and I'd clarify that I was happy to be told to do it (escalation) but it would impact the plans for my team. Ultimately I want the company to do well so it's in my own interests to say yes as much as I can. Making sure everyone understands the impact of the interruptions is key.
August 3rd, 2010 at 1:01 pm (#)
"However, I worry that it's not quite as easy as Mark suggests. Very often requests for time come out of the blue and the start date is today."
I agree that nothing is as black and white as "yes" being the right answer 100% of the time. You will have circumstances where the answer is that "it cannot be done." You mention diplomacy and negotiating skills, and my blog post and I agree. The thrust of the message that "no" ends a conversation and "yes" begins a collaboration. Balancing competing priorities is tricky business and I do not advocate burning out. So brush up on the diplomacy and negotiating skills, but keep the attitude of "yes" to advance the interests of your company or business.
Mark Metcalfe
August 9th, 2010 at 7:42 pm (#)
Quote: "no" ends a conversation and "yes" begins a collaboration
I like that a lot. (I feel a tweet coming on.)
Thanks for commenting Mark.