What can I talk you out of today?
Do nothing. Really.
Dave E. retired this week.
He and I worked at a F500 a long time ago, him in IT and me in Training and Development, back before the internet was a thing and field managers had to modem into a mini-mainframe to run reports, etc. Dave was there for the roll-out of email, Windows and color monitors, which gives you a sense of how long ago this was. My department developed and executed the training in the HQ office and then on the road for ~60 field offices.
Whenever I went into Dave’s office, he would start the conversation with, “what can I talk you out of today?” I would counter it with my standard opening, “how easy would it be to…” and more often than not, he would groan, lean back in his chair and stare up at the ceiling as I chattered on a mile a minute about how this or that would be the future of this or that and we should be doing it.
Dave was not a negative thinker. He was actually very forward-thinking. I got a lot of ideas pushed through the C-suite because of him. With this one question, he help sharpen my critical thinking skills by forcing me think of opposition to an idea as something to sharpen against, not shut something down. Maybe the timing wasn’t right, maybe the idea wasn’t fleshed out enough, maybe I didn’t think through the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) buy-in I would need from others, especially the folks with the power to sign checks.
But he never just said “no.”
I’m not sure whether he thought I was a visionary or he was just resigned to the fact that I did not give up easily so he may as well get the pain over with quickly, but he engaged and helped develop a lot of practicality to some pretty hair-brained creative ideas I had. He left a few months before I eventually did and his replacement was a task-oriented person rather than strategic, so those regular conversations ended.
Dave also made me aware of the “do nothing” option. What was the cost — actual and opportunity — of doing nothing? What was the upside of doing nothing? Is the “do nothing” the best option from all the other options? Would “do nothing” do harm or good? How do you know? Most often, we think doing something is better than doing nothing in a situation, but this isn’t always the case (Uber, AirBnB, streaming are examples of doing something that made things worse than doing nothing, but I digress.)
Dave always asked the question and made me answer it, made me think about it. So if you know me IRL and hear me ask about the “do nothing” option, that was all Dave.
Anyway, a little departure from the usual content that you see from me here and I hope it was worth reading. I tried talking you out of it; you could have done nothing.
If you got to this line, thank you for sticking with me. I’m sure Dave had no idea how much influence he had when he said, “what can I talk you out of today?” and “what’s the cost/benefit of doing nothing?” I told him as a comment in his retirement announcement and we had a good virtual laugh about it.
Who in your past has influenced how you think with maybe just a few words that they thought were throwaway lines?
"I ain't here to hear all that."
Ha ha...I've learnt that 'do nothing' pays off occasionally, thanks to my procrastination.