Don't Say No, Say How Much

As a technical manager, among the many roles you fill are as a protector of your team and as the public face of your team. As the protector, your job is to keep the craziness away from your team as much as possible - things like changing requirements, unreasonable schedules, frequent changes in focus. As the public face of your team, you need to be the team’s advocate, spokesperson, cheerleader and filter.

If you’ve been lucky (like me), you lead a team with highly creative, smart and motivated engineers. There’s a lot of trust among team members and in you personally. This means that you’re going to get an earful if they think some new task or requirement is not to their liking or doesn’t fit the company strategy. They will likely say it in such a way that your stakeholders won’t appreciate it. That’s OK - as long as it stays with you. Even if they’re right, your job is to get them on board to implement the desired change.

When it comes to communicating to stakeholders about this, you can’t say to them, “this will make my team cranky”, or, “my team will think this is dumb”. What you can, and must, do, though is talk about risks, trade-offs, and impacts on schedules and budgets. And better yet, work with your team to start thinking along these lines, too. Not only does it make your job a little easier, but you’re helping the team grow as professionals and to become better communicators. Let’s take an example.

You’re already midway through executing your quarterly plan when you find out that a potential new customer needs to be wowed by your product. But there are some problems with your product that you know about and are on your roadmap to fix - but not this quarter. This is one of those times when the company gets to change your priorities at the drop of a hat. Remember: you and your team are there to provide value and what that means can change for the company. Your team needs you to talk about this change to stakeholders so that the stakeholders understand what they’re asking for. Talk about the risks that this change in priorities will create; talk about what your team will NOT be able to do because of this change; talk about the unplanned financial cost of this change. Basically, be completely rational and back up your arguments with data. Focus on presenting options, not being recalcitrant. This may or may not sway your stakeholders; but it starts an important conversation with them and maybe even points out some things they didn’t think of. And just as important, your team knows that you went to bat for them.

You’ll be able to go back to your “cranky” team and give them the facts from the company’s or product manager’s perspective. This, too, is another opportunity for your team to learn something important about what customers want and why they do what they do.

A former colleague and mentor once told me, “Don’t say no - say how much.” Doing this in a rational way with evidence can really make a difference. It takes practice, but is worth the effort.