Great example Tony!  Thank you for sharing.   If I found myself in that situation, my natural inclination would also be to avoid and verbally persecute.
Congrats on the successful positive no!

-----Original Message-----
From: list-manager@stagen.simplelists.com [mailto:list-manager@stagen.simplelists.com] On Behalf Of Tony Lillios
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2015 9:04 AM
To: buffett@stagen.simplelists.com
Subject: Positive No

Well that felt good.

Today we have an all day planning session for one of my companies (we will be doing out 2x2 which I am looking forward to).  Yesterday morning, the CEO put out a laundry list of requests to the team to come prepared to the meeting with.

I told him how much I valuable the planning session and it working well and I also plan my week on Sunday night pretty carefully.  I had no time blocks to work on the company yesterday and won't be prepared (that was hard to say).

But I told him in the future, even if I don't know WHAT you expect from me until that last minute, knowing you want some pre-work done would be helpful, so I can block some time the day before the meeting.

Normally, like the article pointed out, I would have just Avoided it, said nothing, prosecuted him in my mind (maybe verbally as well) for telling me at the last minute.  It felt good to have a positive no and constructive way to move forward in other quarterly sessions.

-tony