I would say ” we can alter using the word “yes” instead of “no” to show to our customers that we are willing to help in a different way.

I have always known that simply using the word can be mis-construed as an infantile attempt at stopping actions, treated as a tantrum of “No No No!!!!”. It is a word that relies on tact to be effective for most people. Lack of tact when using No will result in the exact opposite effect that you desire. Managers with malice will punish you by forcing the exact opposite on you in a counter-productive punititve method of “teaching you a lesson”. Most customers will label you as combative and non-responsive if you simply start by saying No, even if you back it up with experience/knowledge/whitepapers on prominent websites written by experts. These are just two cases where you cannot win by saying No. You must find another way.

My approach has always been direct (sometimes, brutal) honesty. It’s not malicious or spiteful, just direct honesty. Regardless whether you don’t like that approach, you will always get a certain level of respect (and corresponding amounts of despise, usually) for calling out a bad idea, regardless of tact. Some even secretly admire that level of boldness for calling out bullcrap as needed because they are too milquetoast and secretly fantasize about acting out these scenarios but have indentured themselves to their paycheck.

Warning: if you’re a ladder-climbing, boot-licking, customer-pandering Yes-Man, then don’t use No. It won’t help you either.

I am in a very disappointing situation at work and i am dreaming of leaving this place. It is only six month since i joined this company but my life has become hell because of the boss. He is the kind of person who think he is great and start with some stupid meeting everyday about mentoring and impose on us some moral views to attack our personality. He openly told me that i had too much ego because i told him that i was not growing and that the job was not what i was expecting. Since then he always talk about the right attitude, things that everything start with ‘YOU’ etc. He openly criticized me on the fact that i started my chartership and believe that this was not the company goal and considered that i am concentrating on my personal goal too much. My co-workers are convinced that i do have too much of ego. please give me some tips to get out of that situation.

Your story reminds of another story: “Once there a hungry poor man, carelessly lying outside an abandon house. A mann passing through the avenue notices the poor man and thinks that he must be real hungry. So the man buys a sandwich from a store and gives it to the poor man. the poor man thanked him and that man walked away. The very next day the man notice’s the same poor old man lying helpless on the street, the man again gets a sandwich for him and walks away. This starts to happen everyday now. After ten days have passed, the man again passes from the same street, finds the old poor man lying, but this time he does’t have enough money in his pocket to get a sandwich for the poor man. Lowering his head the man trys to pass across the old poor man, as soonas he passes the old man, the old man shouts and says: Where is my sandwich? You were supposed to bring sandwich for me!”

The story is same as yours, when you start accepting everything, the customer thinks that it is his right and customer’s expectations begin to rise, but the day you are not able to meet the customer’s expectations, the trouble starts!”

So its better to say NO and avoid the build-up of false expectations.

Thanks,
Haris

you have a very nice blog and very informative article…