The simplest way to start is to understand your relationship with your boss. You work several weeks before getting paid, you are the creditor, they are the debtor. Saying no should be natural if you understand your boss owes YOU, not the other way around.
It’s definitely is a disturbing way to think about it. Because typically the creditor is either in a position of power or a peer, but in this case, the debtor is in a position of power. No wonder wage theft outstrips any other theft combined. You are more likely to get money stolen from you by your employer than from some thief.
Though if you look at the history of wage labor, you will find that some of the first wage workers were really slaves who rented themselves out. Sometimes they would give a portion of their wage to their owner, sometimes they wouldn’t :-)
I don’t know the model fits, though. We’ve traditionally thought of these things as agreements. Then, built contract law to formalize it. I think that fits better. So, you agreed to do specific things for specific benefits for specific amount of time. That’s on top of workers having no rights (at-will employment) in many states. The models could be combined possibly.
Also, plainly asking this quesiton can really make them think; is it your intention for me/team to work late or weekends to accomplish this? And if push comes to shove; even after they worked late last week to make other deadline Y?
A lot of people can’t conceptualize priorities unless deliberately prompted.
A lot of businesses nowadays claim to be work agile, so in most places I worked at there is some implementation of Scrum. What I usually tend to set straight when I start in an org is to emphasize the pull-principle, i.e. prioritized backlog, people pull the items from the top. There is a certain magic to it. Devs get more relaxed and leave the office at 5, team leads – not without struggle – learn that not everything can be highest priority, that friction of pushing work items into people’s schedule is replaced by a certain flow.
Unfortunately, this usually involves refuting a lot of strange interpretations of agile / scrum that (I think) often stem from the consultants hired by the orgs to introduce agile methodologies or give management trainings on it.
It’s more like, deflect and avoid an automatic “yes” to superiors.
Obviously you need to weigh input from organizational heads differently, they have a different context then you do (otherwise what’s the point of em’). They tend to have a broader context, you tend to have a more narrow and detailed context.
The superiors’ version of this advice is, don’t automatically override the decision making power of your subordinates, they probably have details that you don’t have. This article is full of good advice.
The simplest way to start is to understand your relationship with your boss. You work several weeks before getting paid, you are the creditor, they are the debtor. Saying no should be natural if you understand your boss owes YOU, not the other way around.
I doubt that will work in most situations for most employees. It was a refreshingly-different take on the subject, though. :)
It’s definitely is a disturbing way to think about it. Because typically the creditor is either in a position of power or a peer, but in this case, the debtor is in a position of power. No wonder wage theft outstrips any other theft combined. You are more likely to get money stolen from you by your employer than from some thief.
Though if you look at the history of wage labor, you will find that some of the first wage workers were really slaves who rented themselves out. Sometimes they would give a portion of their wage to their owner, sometimes they wouldn’t :-)
I don’t know the model fits, though. We’ve traditionally thought of these things as agreements. Then, built contract law to formalize it. I think that fits better. So, you agreed to do specific things for specific benefits for specific amount of time. That’s on top of workers having no rights (at-will employment) in many states. The models could be combined possibly.
The model of creditor and debtor fits. There is a reason wages are called liabilities on the books.
Good point.
If you are not willing to do that kind of analysis, asking your boss which other topic should be dropped from your tasks is kind of effective.
Also, plainly asking this quesiton can really make them think; is it your intention for me/team to work late or weekends to accomplish this? And if push comes to shove; even after they worked late last week to make other deadline Y?
A lot of people can’t conceptualize priorities unless deliberately prompted.
A lot of businesses nowadays claim to be work agile, so in most places I worked at there is some implementation of Scrum. What I usually tend to set straight when I start in an org is to emphasize the pull-principle, i.e. prioritized backlog, people pull the items from the top. There is a certain magic to it. Devs get more relaxed and leave the office at 5, team leads – not without struggle – learn that not everything can be highest priority, that friction of pushing work items into people’s schedule is replaced by a certain flow.
Unfortunately, this usually involves refuting a lot of strange interpretations of agile / scrum that (I think) often stem from the consultants hired by the orgs to introduce agile methodologies or give management trainings on it.
tl;dr: deflect and avoid saying “no” to superiors
It’s more like, deflect and avoid an automatic “yes” to superiors.
Obviously you need to weigh input from organizational heads differently, they have a different context then you do (otherwise what’s the point of em’). They tend to have a broader context, you tend to have a more narrow and detailed context.
The superiors’ version of this advice is, don’t automatically override the decision making power of your subordinates, they probably have details that you don’t have. This article is full of good advice.
That is very much not what I’m suggesting.