Over the last couple months of 2011, a few clients were struggling with a similar dilemma: wanting to be a good corporate citizen while also wanting to say no to peoples’ requests at times.   As we explored this tension between the seemingly different goals, inevitably, we explored the specific organizational politics, and thought through how to build relationships, promote oneself in a balanced way, and also not take on too much out of scope, particularly as demands and resources are tight.

William Ury, Co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, is most well known for his book, Getting to Yes, but he is also the author of the book, The Power of a Positive No; How to Say No and Still Get to Yes .  In this book (published in 2007), Ury outlines a simple and easy to use formula, which changed the way I think about how to say no, and is an effective tool when you need to say no and genuinely want to be supportive of efforts and key relationships.

Formula for Delivering a Positive No:

Say YES – Articulate that you want to support the individual/team/organization in its goals

Say NO – Explain briefly that you are not able to meet the particular need/request as stated.

Say YES – Offer alternative(s) in terms of how you can and are willing to be of help/service to the goals.
I challenge you to try it out and see what you think! Chances are you will say “yes” to using it again.  Let me know how it goes!

Seth Godin draws an inspiring analogy between a dandelion’s life cycle and the process of innovation in his pocket-sized manifesto, Poke the Box.  How often have you had what you thought was a great idea, but just failed to launch? Whether it was fear of failure, time constraints or some other barrier, it can be easy to be paralyzed by our inner critics.  Seth turns the innovation challenge on its head with the dandelion metaphor.  Instead of expecting all of our efforts to succeed, we should anticipate that most of our “seeds” will lie fallow and just a few will eventually succeed.

In all of his writings, Seth is consummately encouraging individuals to think of themselves as leaders and innovators who have large contributions to make.  Great coaches are those who see potential in others beyond what they might expect from themselves.  And thus, Seth Godin is a remarkable coach to all of his readers who have ever wanted to launch a company, write a book, and/or make a great contribution in their field.   Seth also is a guru around creating memorable customer experiences, marketing effectively using technology and social networks and also in redefining the way we should come to view our jobs–not as a job–but as a meaningful opportunity to add value and challenge the status quo.

In both my one-on-one coaching and my leadership development programs, I frequently draw on the concepts and resources from Seth Godin.  Currently, I am leading a series of sessions on the topic of “Turning Failure on It’s Head; The Innovation and Leadership Challenge.”  In this offering, individual contributors, managers and executives alike have the opportunity to read Seth Godin’s Poke the Box paired with the April 2011 Harvard Business Review article,  “Strategies for Learning from Failure.”   In an hour and a half live session, individuals re-examine their own beliefs and associations with failure, gain new understanding of different types of failure, and also have the opportunity to reflect on new strategies locally, which would encourage risk taking and a psychologically safe environment for the “right” kinds of failure.

In conclusion, I have two questions for you.  1.)  How can you “plant” more seeds as you wrap up 2011?    2.) How can you support others around you as a leader and encourage more risk taking and a culture where it is safe to fail, continually adapt and eventually succeed?

Thus, we took a session to analyze her current responsibilities and have what Organizational Development professionals call a START, STOP, CONTINUE conversation.  This is to ask three very simple questions, listed below:

• What do you want to start doing?
• What can you stop doing?
• What do you want/need to continue doing?

While simple to ask, these questions are not so easy to answer, particularly when it comes to stopping work that we have previously owned and which others rely on us to do.   With this particular client, we talked about what initiatives need more attention for the organization to execute against, what she needs to train others to do so she can step out of less critical responsibilities, and what aspects of her job she wants and needs to maintain to be connected to the overall organizational agenda.

The client then decided to forego a formal job description; instead, she decided to create a two-by-two matrix of her scope of responsibilities against the following axes:

• Strategic vs. Operational
• Routine vs. Arising

This, she thought, would enable a more thoughtful conversation about what is most critical to get done with the organizational lens and goals in mind.    This, I thought, is a much more useful way to construct and evaluate the work that people should be doing inside of organizations.

So often job descriptions are opaque and verbose, and laundry list in nature.  Isn’t it time job descriptions had a facelift to reflect what the work really is, which are primary vs. secondary responsibilities, and how the work aligns to the broader organizational goals?

Whether or not job descriptions do evolve, it’s possible to have more thoughtful dialogue about people’s work and how to invest our talent’s most precious resource: their time!  What is it that you and your team should be starting? stopping? continuing? to make the biggest impact? How can you help elevate the conversations and analysis of how people spend their time?