Project Managers often find themselves in a position where they must say ‘No’:

No, that approach doesn’t fit our timeline/budget, please find another way

No, that is not within the scope of our project

No, that does not match the vision for this product

No, unfortunately we cannot resource-share, we need her for this project

Leading a team through difficult decisions and novel, uncharted technologies can be rough terrain. Innovation certainly has its moments of triumph, but for each achievement there is first an iceberg of decision making and prioritization. Different management processes and tools can reinforce the basic principles of project management, but eventually it boils down to the style and approach of the person(s) leading the team.

Project Managers uniquely bring their own approach and personality forward when executing challenging projects. Good project managers say “No” and they say it often. This keeps the team focused, the risks in check, and the plan on track. A rigid approach can certainly lead to success. But more than likely it will be equally draining and depleting for the team to have a regular nay-sayer in the group– especially when that person is the leader and vision holder.

Truly great project managers find ways to say “Yes”

In my experience, saying “Yes” often boils down to hearing out an idea, asking the right questions, and moderating the final decision as opposed to prescribing it.

I have been reading about this philosophy in product and project management lately and came across an insightful article written by Jonathan Sherman-Presser. He writes about a gifted product manager who was really good at saying “no”, while keeping momentum on creativity and without minimizing the ideas that fueled the team. Some of this is simply about building our glossary of useful phrases, such as “great idea, let’s do that in v2”, “let’s evaluate and decide”, or “let’s revisit after the MVP”. Language choice is important.

He writes how prioritization and rigid steering of a project does not necessarily lead to building the right thing. But rather, we need to focus our efforts on evaluating value. And sometimes this means letting go of some control, being open to out-of-the-box and unexpected ideas, and flexibly managing toward the best outcome – not necessarily the obvious one.

Geoffrey James writes about prioritizing value in this simple, How-to article that challenges our typical “To-Do” list approach in getting things done. The application of the Pareto Principle here is easy to follow both in terms of implementation and logic. This simple principle suggests that 80 percent of effects come from 20 percent of the causes.

Applied to product development, we can use this model to comfortably explore different approaches, ideas, and collaborative opportunities where the potential benefit is high and the impact is low. Many of us do this intrinsically with our task prioritization already, but applying a couple of useful quantifiers to the prioritization metric could cull ineffectual activities that were not obvious otherwise.

As the project champion, the Project Manager knows the project goals, target timeline and budget. Weaving those objectives and constraints into decision making without curbing creativity is a soft skill that differentiates project managers from gifted leaders.

I look forward to hearing your ideas and strategies for saying Yes! Please share them.