Saying no to ad hoc asks at work
A step by step guide to how to do this
A while back, I wrote about the importance of saying no, but it was in a fairly broad sense. Recently, I’ve thought a lot about the more focused question of saying no to ad hoc asks at work. Importantly, I will caveat that this is not something I personally have a ton of experience with, but it’s something a lot of my friends go through. I think there are certain roles that tend to be particularly prone to receiving these ad hoc asks—namely engineers, data scientists, and PMs.
In most of these scenarios, they’ve reached a point where they have a niche and own some specific part of the product/business. Usually, there’s generally a sentiment of accidentally ending up quite useful at work and suddenly finding oneself on the receiving end of many different asks.
On the one hand, it’s kind of a nice feeling to know that you’re important. On the other hand, it’s likely to be pretty damaging to your productivity and work satisfaction, as well as the sustainability of the job. It’s definitely not a long-term solution to just say yes to every request that comes in, no matter how big or small. (It’s time to squash the people-pleasing tendency!) Additionally, if you say yes to everything, you feed the vicious cycle of enabling others to rely on you for things that may or may not rightfully be within your scope. And, I haven’t even turned to the argument of accounting for how expensive it is on your time and productivity to constantly be randomized.
Through many discussions and pontifications about this with friends, I’ve built out a brief framework for what I’d do if I were in this situation.
In general, the “override” criteria are as follows, meaning if some of these are met, you should probably say yes.
Does it build goodwill with partners with whom you want to deepen your relationship or build your social capital? (i.e. ask them for favours later on)
Does it earn you visibility with leadership that’s beneficial for your brand? (i.e. is the ask coming from someone really, really senior or otherwise very important in your reporting chain?)
Does it deepen your subject matter expertise in a way that complements your primary focus work?
Does it interest you or tickle a curiosity you want to explore further?
Can it be done without sacrificing your primary focus work?
If any of the following issues come up, then it’s likely a yellow flag and you should think deeply before saying yes.
Is it something fleeting or will people ask for this again?
If it feels fleeting, then the likely answer here is that you should wait to see if this request comes back up again. Usually fleeting requests are not worthy of randomizing your time and distracting you from your core work.
If it seems likely that people will ask for this again, understand why and if that’s a sign this is pretty important.
Do I know where this is going to be used?
If not, probe deeper. Understand if it’s a random musing someone had and not a truly serious research question or request. If it’s a deeper business question that has large ramifications, should it be part of some more formally scoped work?
Is it being asked for with a timeline/deadline?
If not, that might be a sign that there’s no clear path for applying the output anywhere. It might just be curiosity, which may make it less worthwhile.
However, if for other reasons, you think you want to say yes, establish a timeline that’s reasonable for you. Consider your formally assigned/scoped work and generally do not prioritize the ad hoc request in a way that jeopardizes your “normal” work, unless it’s something truly urgent.
And if you do say yes, here’s what to do:
Keep your manager up to date on this request and make sure they are also bought in.
Set realistic timelines and manage expectations, and state to other stakeholders clearly that this is something “above and beyond” your usual scope.
Share your findings in forums where appropriate—you don’t have to only share this back to whoever asked for it. You can pass it on to other teams or individuals who might find it interesting or relevant to their work as well.
Keep a record of the ad hoc asks you’ve handled and reflect those in your self-reflection at performance review time to show the breadth of your work and contributions.