Want to get ahead? Say no.
Last week I talked about getting ahead by finding yourself a junior DBA, and this week I want to cover another tactic: saying no.
If you’re a good worker, you’re going to get a reputation. People are going to bring you work. If you’re a nice person, you’re going to want to say yes. It feels great to say yes, and it feels great to make people happy. Problem is, the better you get at working (no matter what the job is), the more people are going to want to give you things to do. It really does never end – and that’s great. It’s job security.
Being a great employee means saying no.
A lot.
Great employees have to say no several times a day. As I write this, it’s eight AM, and I’ve already said no twice. It’s not that I like saying no – it sucks – but there’s a lot of work that needs to get done, and I can’t do all of it.
Saying no means that when something really cool comes along at a moment’s notice, you can say yes. If you’ve booked yourself chock full of deadlines and you have to work 50 hours a week just to do your regular stuff, then you don’t get to work on the fun spontaneous stuff that comes up out of nowhere.
Here’s how to determine when to say yes and when to say no:
- Is it a project you’d be proud to put on your resume?
- Is it a project your manager is going to be proud of?
- If it doesn’t get done, is it going to reflect poorly on you – or on somebody else? (Hint: the “stakeholder” is the person who stands to gain or lose by the task’s success.)
- Can it be handed off to someone more junior than you?
- Is there someone else who would kill to get their hands on this work? (Hint: the person who WANTS to do the work is the person who will do the best job on it, sometimes even if they’re not the most qualified, because they’ll devote the most love and attention to it instead of racing to get it done.)
- Exactly what have you got on your plate right now? (If you can’t immediately point to a list of all your outstanding tasks, you need to say no until you CAN point to that list. I suggest RememberTheMilk.com.)
- Does it play into your GTD 50k foot view? (Does it map to something in your career plan? More on that later…)
November 5th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
While I agree that its important to know when to say “no”, the author places too much emphasis on personal goals, and not enough on doing what’s best for the company. Unless _you_ are the company
You (or your manager) should be setting up the priorities based on achieving company’s long term goals, not what looks good on your (or your manager’s) resume. This is what you are paid for.
In the long run, this kind of attitude will only get you in trouble.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
You actually nailed it in your comment: _you_ are the company. You are always your own company, no matter where you work, with your own customers. Your job as a self-contained company is to please your customers in a way that gets you where you want to go.
It’s a radical concept in the DBA world, but it’s pretty common to hear outside of database administration. Swing by your local bookstore and pick up a book on personal branding. It’s a real eye-opening concept.
You don’t want people saying, “Company X is doing great!” You want people saying, “This guy really took Company X to the next level!” It can’t just be about the company: it has to be about you AND the company.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
[...] Ozar put together a great post on SQLServerPedia about getting ahead by saying no. This is definitely great advice that I could have used at the beginning of my career and could [...]