A Can['t] Do Attitude

Posted by Anthony

I tend to think with the left side of my brain. Whereas some people prefer to form opinions from palatable and memorable case studies, I prefer to analyze data, look for patterns & trends, and determine my opinion based on cold, hard, macro-level evidence. Neither approach is right or wrong, but both have some major costs & benefits that at this point in my career, I am only beginning to understand.

The vast difference in these two approaches has become evident these last few months, as my business partner, Cheyne, and I, discuss and debate the merits of certain ideas surrounding the sales and featureset of DistiSuite. You see, he is the voice of our company - our sales, marketing & customer service departments all rolled into one. I, on the other hand, focus more on our general business direction, finances and the actual product development -- ah yes, to be multi-hat-wearing small business owners...

Naturally, Cheyne receives a lot of client feedback about the positives and negatives of our system. And when he receives complaints/suggestions, his first reaction is to enthusiastically say "yes, we can fix/do that", and come to me with an interesting new problem or idea that requires feedback. And there's nothing wrong with that. After all, no great company was built on the premise that new ideas & feedback were disregarded.

However, I increasingly find myself saying "no". It's not that I don't want to improve. But the reality is that most ideas aren't all that great. And even when they are, they're not usually scalable - in other words, if all of our clients can't benefit from an idea, then it's a one-off time sink, which either needs to be billed for accordingly, or ignored.

The left side of my brain tells me that most problems are fluff. They are random, fleeting complaints. One-off improvements for individual clients that don't better the system as a whole. And so, my visceral reaction is to ignore them. That's actually an important skill, because when you run a small business, it's important to dedicate as much focus and mindshare as possible to what actually matters; if you can't concentrate on the big picture, you'll get stuck solving a bunch of insignificant problems that don't ultimately put you in the black.

But lately, this "skill" has gotten me in trouble. I've been brushing off so many problems as distractions that I fear I may be losing sight of the fact that some of them are indeed legitimate. I'm turning into Microsoft post-Windows XP. Yahoo circa 2003. Negligent, and not willing to accept that there may be some issues on the horizon worth paying attention to.

At the same time, if I'm Microsoft or Yahoo 7 years ago, Cheyne very well may be [insert-dot-com-bubble-domain-here].com circa 1999 -- focused so feverishly on the long-term valuation of the service that it's almost forgotten there's a short-term cashflow to generate. Now, a yin-yang business relationship is pretty great, most of the time. It leads to compromise. But when simple discussions begin turning into 3-hour standoffs, there's an issue. Instead of spending hours walking towards a middle-ground, we should be meeting closer to it in the first place. And so we are changing our thought processes and behaviors.

Lately, Cheyne has been filtering a bit more, where possible. If a client has a request that is legitimate yet ultimately small fish in the grand scheme of things, he attempts to figure out a quick fix on his own, or even just brush the issue aside completely. But on my end, that means that when Cheyne does come to me with an issue, I treat it seriously, respectfully, and with implicit trust. In other words, I am doing my best to use the right side of my brain - to empathize with problems, and to trust that most ideas presented to me are worth at least a few minutes of discussion, even if prior data & patterns nag at me otherwise.

And I think we're onto something. Not only are we concentrating more on the big picture lately, but we're also improving our service at a swifter pace than ever before. A true win-win.

How does this relate to your business and/or personal life? Are you a "can" or "can't do" type of person? How has that historically benefited or burned you?