Reading Time: 4 min 57 sec

Archive | Upgrade to Premium | Advertise

🎣 The Catch Up

Dear Readers,

You didn’t think I’d leave you hanging on Christmas Eve, did you?

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus or anything else you choose to celebrate in December 😀

In short, health and happiness to you and yours!

Today’s note is about how to navigate your priorities (professional or otherwise) in 2024.

It’s about:

• Knowing when to say ‘No’ to opportunities instead of ‘Yes’

• How to say ‘No’ so people actually thank you…

Learning when and how to say ‘No’

Today, I’m sharing with you the current iteration of my “Saying No” Framework.

Consider it my gift to you…

Back to “Pure Procurement” content (pun intended) in 2024.

Have a great week ahead.

Best,

Joël

P.S. In case you missed it, here was my most popular LinkedIn post of the week:
As you inevitably measure your life this December, ask yourself how you could positively impact your community in 2024.

🌙 Sunday Night Note

When to Start Saying ‘No’

For most people, saying ‘No’ in a professional setting is very uncomfortable… When your manager or client asks you to do something, the ‘Yes’ quickly comes out of your mouth.

At the beginning of your career, your objective should be to touch as many different domains as possible, taking the time to execute perfectly, gather data about your strengths/weaknesses and move onto the next challenge. This requires a lot of ‘Yeses’.

However, as you become a more seasoned professional, ‘No’ should become your default answer. Why? Well, you now know what you are good at, what you enjoy doing and what is considered valuable by the market.

When do you know it’s time to make this switch? When you’ve found your “Career Sweet Spot”:

Once you’ve found work:

• You’re good at (you do work faster and better than others)

• You enjoy doing (It’s fun, there’s plenty to keep learning over time)

• That the ‘market’ values (it needs to put bread on the table)

…your default answer to new opportunities should be ‘No.’

Why?

You should now be concerned with developing mastery in your “career sweet spot.”

New random, unrelated opportunities, although interesting, will take time and energy away from what you are trying to accomplish. This is true whether you’re working as an employee or have your own business.

A 30-year career flashes by in an instant… If you are after impact and making unique contributions to the world, you need focus!

Let’s explore how this should happen tactically…

Getting to ‘Yes’

Once you’ve found your career sweet spot, your default answer becomes ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’. However, that doesn’t mean your answer is always ‘no.’ So how do you know when to say yes? Let me tell you… It’s not by relying on your gut feeling… This is a recipe for failure. I’ve tried. 😅

I recommend using gating questions (that you can tweak over time) for all new opportunities that present themselves. This removes your feelings from the equation (e.g. stressed, too relaxed, busy, tired, anxious, refreshed, etc.). It makes things more objective and systematic…

Here are my 5 “opportunity evaluation questions” as they stand today:

1. Does this opportunity fit my career agenda and identity (i.e. sweet spot)?

2. Does it generate “hell yes” type excitement? (or is it just interesting...)

3. Do I have time to do a good job without sacrificing existing commitments?

4. Does the opportunity leave space for my personal life?

5. Am I uniquely qualified to fill this need?

These are my questions because:

• I find too many things interesting….

• I always think I can fit one more thing into my schedule and end up sacrificing my personal life in the process

• I want to work on problems that I don’t think very many other people can solve (e.g. I am uniquely qualified)

All these questions need a ‘Yes’ for me to seriously consider a new opportunity. Otherwise, I trust my process and don’t engage with the opportunity.

I recommend making your own gating questions based on your context and objectives.

“Joël, that’s all well and good but am I not pissing people off by doing this? Is it not pretentious?”

How to Say ‘No’ Gracefully

Generally speaking, we take ourselves way too seriously... We think everyone is watching and analyzing our every move. We think that by saying ‘no’, we’re eroding the reputation we’ve worked so hard to build.

The truth is nobody is thinking much about you (apart maybe from a mentor or coach) 😂. Here’s what they are thinking before they ask you for help: “Hmmm, I have a problem in front of me and I need it solved. X person might be the best person to solve it for me.”

All they are looking for is a solution to a problem they have.

Saying ‘No’ gracefully is all about helping the person solve their problem.

Here’s how that conversation could go:

“I’m unfortunately not in a position to help but I understand what you’re trying to accomplish and why. Here’s a couple things I can do…”

• The “why you can’t” doesn’t typically matter

  • If in an employee/employer relationship, design your questions openly with your manager. “You hired me the be X, right?” Then, you can refer back to them when odd asks come your way. “Didn’t we agree that I am here to do X?”. This helps address the “why you can’t” question.

• The things you can do to help:

  • Give them resources they can use to solve the problem themselves (a guide, a course, etc.)

  • Connect/Refer them with someone else who can help them (someone with a different ‘career sweet spot’ than your own).

  • Help them think through how they can redesign the problem to find other types of solutions

If you’re not comfortable doing that in a live conversation, then say “I need to think about it and will get back to you at X time.” Then, take the time to think through it and reply with your ‘No’ via email. Save your message as a template.

Help the other party solve their problem. They will be just as happy (if not more) than if you had solved the problem yourself by doing the work.

I hope this is helpful for you going forward.

Make 2024 the year of FOCUS!

💭 Quote of the Week

📊 How Did I Do This Week?

Best comment from last week:

I love it 😅
Leave a comment to get featured next week
(and let me know if I can use your full name).

📣 Spread the Word

If you 💗’ed today’s edition, share it with another Procurement professional in your network who would find it useful.

The email writes itself: “Read this. Thought of you. I think you’d enjoy it.”