Yesbutters and Whynotters Mon 14 Jul 08

The other day I ran across an interesting post at Management Quotes.  Apparently it has been around for a number of years and unfortunately the source is not known.

Yesbutters and Whynotters

Yesbutters don't just kill ideas.
They kill companies, even entire industries.
The yesbutters have all the answers. Yesbut we're different.
Yesbut we can't afford it.
Yesbut our business doesn't need it.
Yesbut we couldn't sell it to our workforce.
Yesbut we can't explain it to our shareholders.
Yesbut let's wait and see.
All the answers. All the wrong answers.

Whynotters move Companies.

The next time you're in a meeting, look around and identify
the yesbutters, the notnowers and the whynotters.
God bless the whynotters. They dare to dream. And to act.
By acting, they achieve what others see as unachievable.
Why not, indeed?
Before the yesbutters yesbut you right out of business.

I'm sure everyone in IT will grimace at the "Yesbut we're different." line as we've all heard it many times in many forms.  Before we get ourselved out of sorts about this keep in mind that IT may be just as guilty.  Ever heard the following from your IT group?

• Yesbut it doesn't meet our standards
• Yesbut it doesn't comply with our policy
• Yesbut it isn't an approved software package

Often IT is more of an yesbutter than a whynotter.  Oh, I know that standards exist for a purpose and I know that we can not always do things that our users want but perhaps we can change our perspective just a bit.

• Whynot think about the request before just dismissing it out of hand with "it's against policy" or "doesn't meet our standards" and see if we can come up with an alternative that we both can live with.
• Whynot explain to our users why we can not do something.  They may still not like the answer but may appreciate that you explained it to them.
• Whynot listen to the request carefully to determine what is the real problem they are trying to solve.

Maybe with a change in attitude and perspective we can figure out way to make things happen and solve problems and still be seen as a help rather than an annoyance.  All of this brings me to my favorite quote:

"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."  - George Bernard Shaw

Are you a yesbutter or a whynotter?

"Why Not?" photo by daryl_mitchell

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Let's Hang Up The Gloves
• Mind Your Posture or RTFM?
• Director of First Impressions
• Or the posts in the "Customer Service" category