Integrity is the cornerstone that I build all my leadership skills around. I’d like to spend some time talking about why.

Why

The software development space is a fast paced business. A lot of that stems from the desire to innovate. Creating software isn’t a sprint, though, as many would like to think. It’s a marathon. Ironically enough we spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves that it is a sprint. We even use the term “sprint” to describe the cadence that we deliver at in SCRUM life cycles. But if a team wants to deliver at a truly fast pace, the good kind of fast, they can only do that by going well. This can be a hard lesson to learn, though, because doing things well comes with a cost that a lot aren’t willing to pay.

That’s where Integrity comes into play. I’ve always wanted to help my teams be the best they can be, build the best things they can build, but you can only do that if you are willing to choose the not so easy path.

Saying No

You have to be willing to say no.

Someone asks you if your team can deliver a feature you know needs to take 3 months to build in 1 month? You have to be willing to say no.

Someone asks you to have your team skip some part of your engineering process that you know you have to do? You have to be willing to say no.

Someone wants you to split up your teams and “tackle” a broad area of items when you know you need them to focus on one thing at a time and do it well? You have to be willing to say no.

It’s hard to say no. It’s really easy to say yes. Saying yes all the time can destroy large organizations. Yes can cripple big initiatives. You may be wondering how. I’ll tell you how.

Accountable

When all you say is Yes, Accountability is lost. When someone really needed to have that thing built in 1 month and you told them “no problem”, but you knew it was going to take 3 months, they relied on you. They went and made commitments on that product you were going to build for them, and now those commitments can’t be kept.

Reliable

When all you say is Yes, Reliability is lost. When someone told you to just skip a part of your engineering process and you said “we’ll get right on it”. You launched the product on time, but an hour after launch the site crashed because of the process you chose to skip. Now they can’t rely on your team anymore.

Confidence

When all you say is Yes, Confidence is lost. Maybe someone came to you about spreading out your team across different initiatives, but they heard about all the other things you’ve been saying Yes to and not being able to deliver. They have serious doubts about what your team can really do at this point.

Being Positive

You have to be willing to be honest about what is really possible. No is not a negative statement.

No lets you establish what can be done. Where Yes is over promising and under delivering, No lets you under promise and over deliver. No helps your partners come to the table to figure out what can be done. It gives them the opportunity to discuss alternatives. Yes takes that away from them.

Say yes to what you can achieve, say no to what you can’t. Allow your stakeholders the chance to discuss alternatives. They may not want to hear no in the beginning, but in the long run they’ll come to rely on your teams more and more because they know they can trust your yes.

Saying no when you need to means that when you say yes people will believe in you, and they’ll believe in your team.

As a leader you need people to believe in your team.