A good friend of mine is a Risk Manager for a privately owned, contracting firm. He recently regaled me with a story about his former “boss”, who, in the throes of a particularly challenging day, stormed into his office and filled the air with expletives. After the door was kicked closed, and the air cleared, he calmly said to my friend, “$7.25 an hour can buy me ‘no’, I’m paying you to find a way to ‘yes’.” Well, there it is! You either find a way or make a way to yes or you default to no.
The following is an excerpt from “Always Forward”, available for purchase December 17, 2015
Make a choice to become an indispensable gift to your customer, coworker, and company. The bias of find a way or make a way is baked into your DNA. It will be with you when you join your employer or meet and marry your spouse. You will notice people either have a disposition to find a way to yes or check the box of no. Trying to turn a no bias into a yes bias reminds me of the lesson in the metaphor—if you try to teach a pig to sing, all you do is waste your time and annoy the pig.
Professional speaker and author Dean Minuto draws a distinction between a yes and no bias through the following story. As Minuto was embarking upon his whirlwind speaking adventures, he found himself at home in another airport. He had a new set of headphones for his iPad and needed something to open the seal of the package. He walked up to a rental car counter where a man and woman stood waiting to assist.
He asked, holding up the case, “Could you help me with this? Do you have a knife or something I could open this with?” The woman looked incredulous and replied, “This is an airport, no knives.” The man stepped forward, took out his keys, and although in rough-hewn fashion, he managed to open the case. Guess which one had the yes bias and which one had the no bias?
In your life, there will be those who find a way to yes, and there will be those who follow an internal disposition and perhaps a corporate protocol to find no. This is one of the differences between those who don’t and won’t and those who can and do. You have a tendency toward a yes or no bias before you enter the workplace, it is a part of your DNA—you either are determined to find a way or make a way, or you default to no.
