Thursday, 21 May 2009
Learn how to say yes!
One of the best films I’ve seen in recent months was Yes Man starring Jim Carrey.
If you haven’t seen it, the film (based on a book incidentally) deals with a guy who tends to be very negative. He’s not moving forward in work or in life in general because of his reluctance to be pro-active and say ‘yes’.
In general I think saying yes more often is a great lesson for anyone to live a richer life, but it can also apply to how we behave in business.
If I think back, I wince at the number of times I’ve seen ideas shot down with a cold ‘no’ rather than be welcomed with an adventurous ‘yes’. I cringe at the times when excuses were found to say ‘no’ to customers and I remember the debilitating excuses we created in our own minds that prevented us from experimenting with new techniques and approaches we were curious about.
So what about you? Are you confronting new ideas with a ‘no’ all too often? If some of your colleagues are eager to try setting up a blog or dipping their feet into twitter, are you telling them that it’s a waste of time?
It’s not that every idea is right or will work, but even if they don’t work out it’s not usually fatal. Breeding a culture that has the guts to say YES to new ideas, opportunities and tactics is, in my opinion, more important than constantly saying no out of fear.
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