Wednesday 20 November 2013

The No Empathy Sandwich


Having worked in software for a number of years I often noticed how my workload seemed to accumulate almost from no where (I use that term deliberately). I’d find myself with multiple ‘mini’ projects on the go, tight deadlines and a fair amount of pressure. I’d sit back and wonder ‘how it came to this?’. The answer could usually be traced back to a conversation about a proposal, change request or upgrade where I agreed to take on something that in hindsight was not a good idea. It was driven by a reluctance to say ‘No’.

Where this reluctance came from, I’m not quite sure. I worked in a few start-ups where nothing was impossible, crazy deadlines and late nights were par for the course. Saying ‘No’ was not part of the culture in that environment and the customer was literally always right. Not saying ‘No’ and always acceding to customer demands, can lead to a situation where your customers run your business, not you. That is not a good thing, even in start-ups. Product road-maps get hi-jacked, innovation suffers at the expense of piecemeal tweaking and delivery.

So assuming saying ‘No’ needs to be done every now and again, is there a good or bad way of delivering the potentially bad news? Turns out there is.

I came across a neat article which explained it in an equation called the ‘Empathy Sandwich’ as “No= Empathize + Decline + Empathize Again”. For example a client says  ‘Can you add a new screen to report on XYZ?, it takes me ages to do it manually‘ . First comes a little bit of empathy ‘Ok , I see where you are coming from, it’s not easy to get time for that every week’. But then comes the Decline – ‘But I don’t have a project team I could put on that change‘. Followed up by some more empathy  ‘I hope your workload levels out, you guys do a really great job over there’.

That example might sound a touch contrived but you get the point. Saying ‘No’ in a way that shows some consideration and understanding beats a dismissive tone and helps keep the relationship going, despite the refusal.

By saying ‘No’ you will free up more time, finish more projects, deliver higher quality work and end up fire-fighting a lot less. That will make for happier customers in the long term as you can focus on innovative product development, meet the deadlines you do commit to and not get pulled between multiple piecemeal requests. You will be happier too. Who could say ‘No’ to that?




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