While working with a successful enterprise software firm a few years back I often represented Sales on internal “cross-functional” teams serving as executive liaison with our colleagues in Marketing, Development, HR, Finance, and IT. The company was experiencing sustained growth globally, and Development was increasingly barraged with requests for new functionality, shifting priorities for the release schedule, and custom extensions and integration. This was frustrating to everyone, with R&D feeling no one understood the complexity and dependencies of their work, and the customer facing teams feeling the company was becoming a dinosaur compared to agile new competitors when responding to prospect and customer requests. Not a new problem for this type of firm, but one that posed real risk to achieving revenue growth and margin targets.
R&D leadership decided to invest in some training to help bridge the gap in understanding and address a growing trend of “us versus them” in the ongoing dialogue between the teams. The key concept that our Product Managers, Development leads, senior architects and in fact most of the developers learned was a subtle but extremely powerful shift in how they responded to these constant requests. Instead of immediately rejecting the idea with a phrase like “no we can’t do that, but what you are asking for is on the 18-month roadmap”, they learned a simple reframe. The same request for a new module or feature set was now answered with a “yes, and…” context.
“Yes, we can absolutely do that, and here is what we will need. This means about twenty percent of the next release will have to be frozen and delayed. Resources will need to be reassigned, and we may need to contract or add some specialists to deliver the new solution you are asking about. If that is not acceptable we will need to assign a Project Manager and Architect and contract this outside, which may take more time. Let’s add this to our weekly product launch agenda and decide if we want to escalate it to the Executive Leadership meeting on Monday for approval.”
See the difference? The “yes, and” approach is so powerful because it acknowledges that the requestor has a valid reason for their ask. Since they are not experts in the development process the Product Manager rationally explains what is needed to meet the request, offers alternatives and a path forward. It is collaborative, non-threatening, respectful, and based on fact rather than emotion.
I was sharing this story at a recent conference with a good friend and colleague whose eyes lit up at the simplicity and impact of this phrase. Think about the dozens of demands, large and small, we deal with every day. Prospects and customers asking for special treatment, colleagues asking us to change our schedules, peers and managers asking for more, faster, better. Early in my career my dad shared many of his life lessons, one of which was “you can’t legislate progress”. There are limits to our capacity as humans and laws of nature that can’t be changed. We can choose to ignore these and live in constant stress and turmoil. We can fight and rage against all of those idiots who have no idea what they are asking of us. Or we can breathe in, take the high road, and frame our “yes, and” response to engage in a meaningful dialogue.
Any relationship… social, professional, family, community, congregational, creative, can benefit from a subtle change like this. Dare we say even in government? It wasn’t too many years ago that bi-partisanship, compromise and rational dialogue was the foundation of our progress and stability as a nation. The conversation can and must change, starting with each of us embracing some new behaviors. You ask if I am committed? Yes, and I know it is a two-way street, a difficult task to give a bit, to compromise, and I am all in. What do you think, can we get this new feature set to market this year?