The No Club

In February 2010, five women meet at a Pittsburgh restaurant to discuss a shared problem: they are drowning in work and cannot stop saying yes. Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), calls the meeting after comparing her daily calendar to that of her male colleague George. George devotes seven hours to research, the primary factor in their performance evaluations, while Linda has only one, her day consumed by committee meetings and obligations she agreed to take on. She recruits four women facing similar predicaments: Brenda Peyser, an associate dean at CMU's public policy school, who reflexively agrees to requests before they are finished; Lise Vesterlund, an economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who juggles teaching, recruiting, and editorial boards; Laurie Weingart, a professor in CMU's business school, who recognizes she is stretched thin; and MJ Tocci, an attorney and consultant who gives away her expertise for free to women's organizations. They call themselves The No Club.

The club meets regularly to hold one another accountable. Shortly after it forms, MJ is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She participates in meetings throughout four years of treatment before passing away in February 2014, and her legacy gives the club a greater sense of purpose. The remaining members catalog the tasks overwhelming them, initially calling them "crappy tasks," then renaming them non-promotable tasks, or NPTs: work that is important to organizations but does not advance the careers of those performing it. The authors introduce the concept of organizational currency, meaning what an organization values most. Tasks closely aligned with organizational currency are promotable and tend to be visible, instrumental to core goals, and reliant on specialized skills. Non-promotable tasks are the opposite: often invisible, unlikely to require unique expertise, and easily assigned to anyone. Common NPTs include helping others with their work, logistical planning, committee work, recruiting, onboarding and training, and office housework. The authors acknowledge their privilege as white tenured professors and note that the burdens of NPTs fall more heavily on women with less privilege.

Case studies illustrate how NPTs operate across industries. Francesca, a third-year associate at a law firm, excels at recruiting summer associates at her boss's request but learns at her sixth-year review that her billable hours are behind target, because recruiting is not tied to the firm's promotion criteria. A 2021 McKinsey and Lean In survey of 423 organizations and 65,000 employees finds that 87 percent of companies consider employee well-being support critical, yet only 25 percent formally recognize it in evaluations.

The authors present extensive evidence that women disproportionately shoulder NPTs. Multiple large-scale studies of university faculty confirm that women spend significantly more time on service work than men, and faculty of color spend an additional three hours per week on non-promotable service, with Black and Latinx faculty particularly affected. A study of 1,223 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees finds that female agents perform more pat-downs because agents may only pat down travelers of their own sex and women are underrepresented on staff, resulting in fewer breaks and higher quit rates among women. Analysis of a professional services consulting firm reveals that the median woman spends approximately 200 more hours per year on non-promotable work than the median man. Studies of lawyers, engineers, investment bankers, teachers, and supermarket clerks confirm the same pattern.

The authors' research identifies two drivers of this imbalance. On the supply side, women are more likely to say yes. A laboratory experiment placed participants in groups of three and required them to find a volunteer for an undesirable task. In mixed-gender groups, women volunteered 48 percent more often than men, but when the experiment was repeated with single-gender groups, volunteer rates were essentially identical. The gap stems not from inherent traits but from a shared expectation that women will step up when men are present. Research also shows that women feel greater guilt when declining NPTs and face penalties in evaluations for refusing, while men do not.

On the demand side, women are asked more often. When the researchers added a manager role to the experiment, both male and female managers asked women more frequently. The authors identify five reasons: people ask those they expect will say yes; gender stereotypes make women seem like a natural fit for NPTs; women who perform one NPT well become the go-to person for similar tasks; cultural taxation, a term coined by Stanford professor Amado Padilla, burdens underrepresented minorities with extra committee work; and benevolent sexism, in which well-intentioned efforts to help women actually harm them, leads organizations to assign women development projects without extending the same to men.

The costs of excessive NPTs fall into two categories. Work/work imbalance occurs when NPTs crowd out promotable work. Maria, a database analyst at a fashion company, gradually shifts from technical work to administrative coordination at her boss's request and is denied a return to her technical role. She ultimately resigns, accepting a lower position at another firm because her administrative load left her without a matching technical record. Work overload occurs when someone works excessive hours to handle both types of tasks. Lise, burdened by an ever-growing service load, works on committee reports in a hotel bathroom the night before a family vacation while her four-year-old daughter asks, "Mommy, why are you always working?" (107). After taking on the department chair role, Lise experiences a sudden, severe headache during a faculty meeting that reveals she has severe hypertension. Research links long work hours to cardiovascular problems, poor sleep, and depression.

The authors present The No Club Playbook for evaluating requests and declining effectively. They advise gathering information about a task's scope and promotability, considering who is asking, and avoiding traps such as underestimating time costs or assuming a future commitment will feel less burdensome. For crafting a no, they recommend William Ury's "yes, no, yes" formula: affirm the requester, decline with a brief reason, then offer an alternative. When declining is not possible, strategies include putting conditions on a yes, requesting additional resources, or negotiating which existing NPTs can be reassigned. Beyond individual refusal, the goal is intentional portfolio management: selecting NPTs that are personally fulfilling, leverage expertise, provide a good return on time, or complement current assignments.

The authors make the organizational case for change through Teresa, an aeronautical engineer at Winthrop Air. Identified as a high-potential employee, Teresa is tasked with creating a company-wide mentoring program. After the creative launch passes, the work becomes routine, but no one relieves her. When a VP position opens, the CEO chooses a male engineer whose work directly impacted revenue. Teresa leaves, her female colleagues stop volunteering, and the firm struggles to attract female talent. The authors argue that equitable NPT management advances workforce efficiency, collaborative culture, employee engagement, retention, and recruiting.

For bottom-up change, the authors recommend introducing the concept of task promotability into organizational vocabulary, identifying allies, and taking concrete action such as random assignment of committee work. For top-down change, they present a four-phase framework: diagnose NPT distribution, design solutions from department-level turn-taking to organization-wide point systems, communicate the vision grounding it in both a business case and a fairness case, and institutionalize changes through monitoring and accountability.

The authors close by reflecting on The No Club's impact over more than a decade. Brenda retires and learns to reserve her readiness for what truly matters. Laurie returns to a faculty role and becomes more deliberately selective. Lise steps down as department chair, replaces existing NPTs with mentoring and awareness work, and declines an Ivy League job offer to prioritize family and research. Linda finds renewed purpose in organizational consulting. All four acknowledge they still sometimes say yes when they should say no, but they can now recognize NPTs approaching. Their central message is that women are not the problem: Organizational practices are, and lasting change requires organizations to take responsibility for distributing non-promotable work fairly.