It can be important to push back when someone on your team proposes a decision you believe is wrong.
I recently wrote down the mental model I have been instinctively following when it comes to pushing back the right way / managing your pushback budget.
Many people push back the wrong way. This can be counterproductive, annoying, and slow things down.
The right way to push back is rarely, when it matters, and when the decision might be changed.
The wrong way to push back is often, when it doesn’t matter, and when the decision won’t be changed.
I’ll address the 3 determining variables in a bit more detail:
1. Rarely — If you push back too often, the power of your pushback will be diluted so that every individual pushback becomes weakened. This is why I use the term pushback budget. It’s useful to think of it as a relatively scarce budget with negative consequences for overspending. There’s plenty of budget to push back effectively every time it is most valuable to do so — but you do not have an unlimited budget to be spent recklessly. Spend wisely.
2. When it matters — Of course, whether something matters is not a yes or no as much as it is somewhere on a spectrum, but you can roughly think of this in terms of Bezos’ Type 1 vs. Type 2 decisions — is it reversible? Big, irreversible decisions are orders of magnitude more important to get right than small reversible ones that don’t really matter. Yet you’d be surprised how commonly people push back and argue about the latter. This is a complete waste of one’s pushback budget. Save it for what matters — the irreversible and the important.
3. When the decision might be changed — It is easy to see as an objective observer when an argument passes a point where there is no chance the decision-maker is going to change their mind. The person pushing back has already presented their primary points. The decision-maker often feels as or more strongly in their original stance as they did before the pushback. Even if they have conceded a bit, it is clear they are nowhere near changing their mind. The decision simply isn’t going to change, not until after it is made and the resulting information is produced at least (this takes time). Yet some people will continue to argue and push back here. This is also a waste of one’s pushback budget. It is usually counterproductive, annoying, and slows things down.
The worst is when someone pushes back often, on things that don’t matter, beyond the point where it is obvious to others that the decision is not going to change. It’s this kind of frequent, futile, and frustrating pushback that can get a person fired. It’s unproductive, unhelpful, and wasting everyone’s time. It’s useless revolt that only serves to slow everyone down. If you catch yourself doing this, stop.
All of that said, effectively pushing back on the right issue, in the right way, at the right time, is one of the most valuable soft skills a person can develop. In a company setting, it can be company-saving. In a hospital setting, it can be life-saving. So it’s important to work on pushing back the right way, and managing your pushback budget accordingly.
