Yes, and . . .

How many times have you said “Yes” to a request, only to regret it later?

Many of us like to please our coworkers (and especially our bosses), but always saying “Yes” to a request puts you on the fast-track to being needlessly overburdened and overworked.

And yet when you say “No”, the listener almost always stops listening immediately and prepares for a fight.

Managing in the White Space

A few years ago, I was given the task of improving an internal process at my company. Before this assignment, I had successfully managed groups of ten-to-twelve people: Unix administrators, web infrastructure experts and internet security technicians.

But I managed them—I had positional authority over them. There was a natural inclination to do what I would tell them to do. (That’s not why I was successful, but it helped in getting things done.)

In this new organization chart, however, there was this blank white space under my name: I had no staff, no people working for me. There was no one to tell, and yet I still had to get things done.