The short answer is always "Yes"

Posted on Jan 8, 2010 in Life, Web Dev | 5 comments

I’ve learned a lot in my life, the vast majority of it far less useful than the little gems that are worth knowing. (An example of the useless stuff: the Konami code. Will I ever forget “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start”?) One of the gems that repeatedly comes up when working with clients and project stakeholders is this:

The short answer is always “Yes.”

I first heard this indispensable phrase from Chad Estes. He was my boss at an Internet start-up called Echospace where i worked at the end of and for years following college. We had a technology called “SinglePage” back in 2001 that was essentially what AJAX is today: the ability to load new data in a webpage without refreshing the entire page. Big-time stuff back then.

As a start-up, we were eager for clients. I attended a few early “pitch” meetings with a large company (who shall go unnamed here) and they had requests for all kinds of things for the site we were proposing to build for them. One of our developers listened to these requests, frowned and started shaking his head. “No, that would require too many HTTP requests,” he said (or something similar but equally “techie”). Chad intervened and said that we’d look into a way to do that for them and the meeting continued. In the end, we secured them as a client and built a great product for them, but afterwards Chad addressed the entire company—all eight of us—and taught us the phrase above.

“No matter what a client or a potential client asks for,” he said (though I admit I’m paraphrasing; my memory’s not perfect), “the short answer is always ‘Yes.’ We want them to see us as capable, get-it-done people. Even if they ask for the impossible, we can do it.” It sounds like a recipe for disaster, as everyone has stories of the boss who over-promised features on behalf of developers who knew the impossible couldn’t be accomplished given the constraints. And that’s when Chad explained the corollary to this phrase.

“We can always tell them later that what they want will require additional time, money, or resources. But before we do that, we have to build in them a sense of confidence about us. And,” he added, looking at me (I was a technical writer and client manager at Echospace), “if we clearly communicate the issues and constraints, they will better understand what they’re asking and either agree to the additional time, money, or whatever; or they’ll change their mind on their own without us having told them ‘no, we can’t do that.’”

It’s great advice. Though some might argue it’s dishonest, I disagree. It’s a matter of perception: any feature or tool can be built (especially on the web); it’s just a matter of priority and resources. Saying “yes” to a request isn’t dishonest—it’s smart. It lets you continue the dialog with the client, refine what they’re asking for, and be up front about the requirements to bring that feature to reality.

I’ve used the phrase dozens and dozens of times in my career, and I don’t anticipate it becoming any less useful in the future. As long as it’s used with integrity and honesty, it can only serve you well.

So do you think you can start using this phrase when dealing with your clients and colleagues? (…you should have already said “Yes” by now.)

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