Skip to main content

Everything to Everyone

PALO ALTO, CA - APRIL 21: San Francisco Mayor...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

No- you can't be everything to everyone. Knowing when to say no is a good concept.

However, there is also a time to know when saying something is better than nothing and no isn't acceptable.

I've worked in many places where I did a very specific function in the organization. I would not have been the right person to answer many questions coming in.

However, it always made sense for me to know what others did so when the inevitable call would come to me about something I had little clue on, I could still address it with more than a "I'll transfer you to the right person." 

Three reasons this is not the ONLY thing you should say in these situations:
1. even if it is not your function, they are still YOUR customer by virtue of the fact that you work there. Treat them as such.
2. NO ONE, even you, likes to be passed on to the next person ALONE. It isn't helpful, shows distain for the customer, and will leave a bad taste in your mouth.
3. No isn't acceptable. Period. If you were to call the same folks, would YOU accept no? Collecting a bill, trying to get an answer. NO, you would not accept no. OOPS.

This goes the same for ALL venues you communicate through: phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, smoke signals, whatever! Do not just say no, because it is highly likely you will hear THEIR no relatively soon otherwise!

Related articles by Zemanta

Zemanta helped me add links & pictures to this email. It can do it for you too.

Popular posts from this blog

Check out my appearance on the The Toddcast Podcast

Click and watch the podcast recording of my appearance on the Toddcast Podcast  Such a fun time! 

New Life

  It's weird, sad and slightly freeing. I've been headed towards a completely different life for a lot longer than I even knew. It took me a while to catch up to realize it was happening.  Thankfully, I was cognizant enough to see it finally and mostly ready for it. It's amazing when you have the rug completely pulled out from underneath you. The adjustments are jarring.  I made mistakes, but like most I learned from them, adapted, and tried my best to do better. The reason you see that truck next to a storage place? That's the sum of my life right now.  Never take for granted that you will work hard for something or someone, and it will end up meaning very little. You are guaranteed nothing, owed nothing, promised nothing. Anything and everything can be taken away in a heartbeat.  I wrote this to my kids a while back: I tried to be the best father I could be based on what I knew when I knew it and how I could. One of the lessons for your life needs to be: you need to b

Guiding Light

Most folk who know me, know I lost my father when I was 14 years old.  However, before he passed, he shared a timeless secret with me—a practice that would shape my life in ways I could never have imagined. He didn't teach me meditation in the traditional sense, with incense and crossed legs. Instead, he showed me how to meditate by gazing at a lone light on the ceiling.  When I was very young, I had night terrors that would wake me in the middle of the night. I'm sure it was terribly frustrating to calm a child from that. But my father had the way. I never understood how he came to the practice. But over the years, I've come to understand that my father's unique approach to meditation was, in fact, a profound lesson in mindfulness and presence. In a nearly pitch black room, he would tell me to find a speck of light, not unlike a star. Then focus. He would say, "Just watch the light, like you're watching a story unfold. Be the observer, not the thinker." I