I Can’t…End This Series

Posted on July 13, 2007 by Jim Walton

This is the final post on my accidental series on not saying “I can’t”. This is it! It turned out to be something I got myself into and realized I was trying to expand on an idea that I had no business touching or maybe I didn’t allow enough time for the thought to grow in my head and the post to become all that I intended. Regardless, it was too late to back out.

The first post, I didn’t express my thoughts like I intended, the second one was better but still not that good. Thankfully, Clif came along and said what I was trying to say and he said it much better than I ever could have. His comment is nearly a post in itself, read it here.

Then, later yesterday, I IM’d Clif and we discussed this, among other things, and he pointed me to a couple of his past posts on how he is always coaching his team to find a way to say yes. From this post on the COR IT team’s core values:

  1. Our default answer is “yes”.
  2. Our mission is our user’s mission.
  3. The one mission that is uniquely our own is information security.

His post expands on each point, so click through and read the details. Further down in that same post, he goes on to say:

We don’t always achieve our internal IT Department goals (roll out the software update by Feb. 1, upgrade environmental monitoring in the data center by the end of the month, etc.), but we always get high marks from our user community.

In an earlier post, Clif says:

The people on my team will attest to fact that one of my favorite things to say is: “Our job is to find a way to say ‘yes’.” “No” is easy. “Yes” requires you to exercise your creativity. My “say ‘yes’” philosophy is echoed in this post by Dave Ferguson.

Dave Ferguson’s post that Clif refers to starts out saying:

I have said “yes” to lots of things I had no clue how to do

So, in conclusion, these guys said it better than I did, so I’ll give them all of the credit. I’ll share part of what led me to start thinking about this topic soon, but I won’t butcher it in the process. By the way, I stole the graphic from Tony on his post titled: Yes, No, Maybe, Later?, which is some more thoughts  on this topic.  Thanks, Tony!

Since I’m part of Clif’s team, mostly remotely, I will follow his example right now. YES, I’m putting this topic to bed!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Post to Twitter Post to Digg Digg This Post

Other posts by Jim Walton

»

Comments

One Response to “I Can’t…End This Series”

  1. Tony Dye on July 14th, 2007 2:30 pm

    Ironically, I pulled that post down almost as soon I’d posted it, realizing it needed more work. I think Clif or Brian saw it in the brief time it lived, and I never deleted it fro Typepad, so it’s still out there only for those who know the URL. The graphic was actually from something else and I hacked it up a bit, so it’s kind of a second-hand borrow :-)

    I still say ‘no’ a bit too easily. You and Clif and team have helped me to do some rethinking.

Leave a Reply


If this is your first time commenting on this site, your comment will need to be approved before it is visible.