Know When To Say "No"

We made it through November!

It's always a tough one for me. The days are short, the trees are bare, but there's no snow or lights to brighten things up. Do you find November a slog, too?

Five years ago, the combination of bleak surroundings and an overwhelming amount of work led me to start a campaign (inspired by the name of the eleventh month) to identify things I could say "no" to if I wanted to be happier, healthier, and more productive.

That year, I enlisted a few amazing friends and shared 30 ideas for how to be liberated by saying, "Nope, nuh-uh, nein!"

It's hard to believe that it's five years and 150 no's later.?This year's NOvember was as fun and rewarding as ever. I am forever grateful to the amazing folks who shared their wisdom as part of the campaign.?

I'm also thrilled that, once again,?Janet Holmes?generously provided a wonderful poster version of the thirty "no's." Thank you so much, Janet! Reach out to Janet if you want to bring your ideas to life with visuals.?

And before I forget, I'm also working on my next book. I'm enlisting a small but mighty group of people who want to help me shape the ideas and the writing. Please let me know if you're interested.?

I'll be off of blogging and mostly off social media in December. My friend Dan Pontefract suggested a couple of years ago that I recover from NOvember with MEcember. I realized last year that a little "me" time is good, but mostly, I recharge my batteries with friends and colleagues, so I'll be celebrating WEcember and investing time in connection this month.

See you back in January.?

NOvember

I was 120 "no's" in when this NOvember started, and I wondered if I had thirty new ideas. Fortunately, some brilliant people pitched their ideas, so I only needed to contribute 22... Still, it was a workout!

The full set can be found here, but I picked out one idea per week to expand on in a blog post.??

1: Don't Cross the Streams

I came out of the gate with a "no" that I'm passionate about, not mixing up feedback and evaluation. In Don't Include Feedback in Year-end Reviews, I explained the difference and highlighted four problems with this all-too-common practice. There's also a step-by-step outline of the stages in a performance management year and where feedback and evaluation rightfully belong.?

2: One Throat to Choke

Once I was on a roll, I decided to go after another hot topic these days--fostering?accountability. In Mistakes in Trying to Hold People Accountable, I talk through different mistakes you might be making that erode accountability, transfer accountability to you, or create fear instead of ownership.?

3: You Learn?

Speaking of accountability, how do managers expect to foster accountability if there are never any consequences for flopping? In What Managers Do Instead of Having Consequences, I describe what I see managers do instead of having?consequences. They ignore, nag, cave, rescue, or retaliate. Ugh. If you want to have better consequences, I share the three characteristics of good ones and an exercise to help you craft your own.?

4. But, I CAN'T Say "No!"?

In mid-November, I was interviewed for an article about why people find it difficult to say "no." The reporter asked great questions, and it helped me differentiate between different personality types and different rationales for why you might say "yes" when you shouldn't. In Why You Can't Say No at Work, I look at some honorable reasons (too conscientious, too curious, too caring) and some less honorable ones (too bored, too ambitious, too social). Which one?sounds most like you??

This is just a small fraction of the NOvember content (13%, to be precise), so I hope you'll take a spin back through the posts...especially the guest posts, which were enlightening.?

Resource of the Month

Say "NO" to Meetings?

One of my favorite "no's" this year was saying "no" to meetings. There are so many occasions and purposes for which a meeting is a huge waste of time (and not the most effective approach). I'm excited to share this handy-dandy list of meeting alternatives and what they're good for.

If you'd like the full post with a little more detail, you can find it here.?

(Click on the image to download the poster.)

On the Tube

If you're more of a video type, all thirty "no's" were done as shorts on my YouTube channel. You can find them in the NOvember playlist (along with other years too). As for the long-form videos, here are a couple that were popular.?

I was having lunch with a friend and sharing some advice about how she could make herself more attractive for promotion. It's sometimes counter-intuitive, and your best instincts might lead you astray. Here's a video on what I told her...?

Want to create more accountability? One of the most valuable things you can do is define the thresholds for what that means to you. What things do you expect someone to handle on their own--and which do you absolutely not want them to??

From My LinkedIn Couch

Productivity Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

My first "no" of the month was saying "no" to productivity. I argued that productivity is about?measuring and rewarding outputs rather than outcomes. It would be better to measure effectiveness. You can read the post and see all the comments, here. Some of the most interesting:

Leah Bresso said, "The sweet spot is to settle on a shared picture of what effective looks like and letting people focus on that (and cut out the noise).?I agree that "the secret of doing MORE with LESS be paying attention to what works" with the added benefit of making work more enjoyable."?

Steve Nguyen came in clutch with some great data. "In “Fake Work,” Peterson & Nielson (2009) contend that “much of the hard work people do for their organization does little to link people to the strategies that are intended to help the organization achieve its goals”.?The authors discovered that roughly 50% of the work employees do “fails to advance the organizations’ strategies.” They decided to give this “ineffective work” a name – “fake work.”? So good, Steve. Thank you!!!

Virginia Sharp Marsh added, "This is a powerful reminder to step back and assess our daily actions—are we simply busy, merely productive, or truly effective? Shifting focus from productivity to effectiveness challenges us to prioritize the outputs that truly drive impactful outcomes. In our businesses, this means aiming for results that genuinely support both client success and sustainable growth."

Thanks to everyone who comes to sit on my LinkedIn couch to share, debate, challenge, and learn together. I hope you found at least one of the posts inspired you to say "no" this NOvember and that it made a tiny dent in you feeling happier, healthier, and more productive.?

Here are the four most popular posts of the month. Thanks to Tamsen Webster, Karen Wright, Jessica Holmes, Henna Pryor, Stephen Shedletzky, Steve Pratt, Kendra Reddy, and Fotini Iconomopoulos for all their contributions.?

Thank You, Thank You!

A LOT was going on, but November was amazing, thanks to many of you.

Thanks to the wonderful folks from BDO's Assurance team who invited me to give a virtual keynote on Fostering Accountability at their Summit.

Thanks to the global engineering team at Red Hat, who invited me to give my keynote on effective feedback.

Thanks to our partners at The Talent Company for inviting me to give my new keynote, The Great Reset: Fostering Accountability Without Eroding Empathy. You can watch it here.

Thank you to the Change Community of Practice at Scotiabank for inviting me to be on a panel at their kickoff event. It was a spicy session about AI, productivity, and work/life rhythms. So interesting!

And, most importantly, thanks to you for making it to the bottom of the newsletter.

Talk to you soon!?

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