Señor Sà or Dr. No
Several years ago, I was working for a company that Oracle now owns. I know, that doesn’t narrow it down at all. However, this isn’t about the company. It’s about the people I worked with. It really doesn’t matter where you go. There are always good people and bad people. You can’t get away from bad people by changing jobs. Don’t even try. They morph into different bodies with other names, but they’re the same bad people.
The problem that I had at this previous job was that I was always trying to be Superman. I liked to accomplish things and yes, sometimes showoff a bit, but I became overwhelmed with the requests. I couldn’t say no to anything. I just kept coming through on every request. Worse still, no one really cared. My quick responses just made it easier to make more requests. I eventually had to leave the job and move on before becoming totally consumed.
I learned a valuable lesson. You can’t say yes to everything. Sometimes you have to say no.
I recently worked through an issue where the opposite problem occurred. Some members from another business group (not my normal internal customers) had made a couple of requests. For various reasons, I had determined that there wasn’t an easy solution to the requests and I informed another business user of my findings. This business user went back to the original requestors and told them, “Shannon said no, and it couldn’t be done.‿ They really didn’t like that. So now, I’m Dr. No.
My problem is that I believe anything can be done. Give me a large enough computer and I can design a lever that will move the world. Nevertheless, it’s not always practical to spend the time to accomplish everything that is requested of me. My users love to ask, “Can you do this?” The problem with the question is the answer is always, “Yes.” Given the right amount of time, the necessary resources, and take away competing projects and I like to believe I can do anything.
Therefore, I continue to struggle with this in my career. I haven’t yet mastered the art of saying, “maybe.” That’s why it’s so hard to deal with bad people. They never, ever want to hear no, and they take advantage of you when you say yes.
My dad told me about the backwoods approach to dealing with this problem. Always be “fixin’” to do something. That way, if someone asks you if you can do something, or if they want to know if you’ve completed their request, you can always say, “Not yet…but I’m fixin’ to.”
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