Chamber 🏰 of Tech Secrets #29
The power of "yes"
The Chamber 🏰 of Tech Secrets is open. Welcome back! For whatever reason, I am a little early in my reflection process this year and have started looking back across the highlights of 2023 and some of the lessons I have learned along the way. Early in the year, I decided it was time to open myself up to many of the demands for my professional perspective and my time, and to start saying “yes” more. That can be a scary proposition, but here is what I learned… at least half of it.
Saying Yes
2023 has been a year full of saying “yes”.
Early this year, I decided I would say “yes” to most of the reasonable and relevant professional requests for my time, at least for a season.
To networking requests to share about Enterprise Architecture or Edge Compute… yes!
To attending conferences, meetups, or professional events… yes!
To speaking at conferences or be on panels… yes!
To be on podcasts… yes!
To hosting podcasts… yes!
To starting a personal blog that you are reading here… yes!
To flying to conferences and events that I was invited to… yes!
To meeting in-person with people who requested time… in many cases yes!
You get the idea.
I even said “yes”, or “I do” rather, to my wife.
Saying “yes” has a lot of benefits that you will never discover if you default to “no”.
Meeting new friends: I don’t mean colleagues… I mean friends that are interested not only in what you can do for them, but also what they can do for you. They check in on how you are doing and how your life is going and celebrate your victories. This is an amazing thing. If you are one of these people you know who you are right now, and I appreciate you.
Meeting new colleagues: Not everyone becomes a friend and that’s okay! Capacity for friendship is limited. During the year, I have met countless new professional colleagues who have shared their thoughts and ideas, asked for advice, brainstormed solutions to problems, proposed working groups, pitched their company’s solution, pitched new startup ideas, and more. These are such valuable connections and I am thankful for how they have expanded my horizons and perspectives this year, both professionally and personally.
Learning new perspectives: A blog post I wrote led to a LinkedIn chat led to a webinar together led to an in-person meetup with my friend Spencer earlier this year… all over the topic of sales (something I am not an expert in). I learned a lot about the seller’s perspective and got to share about my own perspective being on the other side. This was a great experience that never would have happened if I defaulted to “no”. Similar experiences have taken place across the year as I’ve taken the time to listen and learn and also share my story.
Finding new solutions: By defaulting to being open, I found a lot of solutions that are potential fits for our business. I also learned a lot about how others were thinking outside of our organization that served as an input to my strategy, or a data point in helping sell solutions I proposed.
Giving back: I have had the chance to share a lot of what I have learned from my amazing team internally, my personal experiences and thoughts, at conferences and on podcasts. This is an incredible opportunity to be granted these experiences to share my story and I am thankful for each one. This helps Chick-fil-A showcase some of what we do but also lets us share some things we’ve learned that hopefully help others.
Honing communication skills: I have often said that, if you can speak intelligently about your working world externally to people who don’t have your same shared context, you will excel at communicating internally. Saying “yes” this year has proven that is true again and again.
Being encouraged to stay the course: I’m thankful to have heard from many, many readers of this blog about how the topics and content have resonated with you. If I ever pondered halting to my writing, I could hear the voices (or remember the written words) of many of you encouraging me to continue. To those of you who have shared that message, thank you for affirming this is valuable to you
Doing things that are challenging: Flipping to “yes” professionally has likely had an impact on my willingness to say “yes” to things that come my way personally. “Yes” has opened me up to lots of challenges I might have passed on (or not pushed as hard for). I pushed myself in CrossFit and hit new PRs (including Murph), did my first long trail race (30k) in a decade and caught the running bug (more on that another time), learned all kinds of things about van builds, etc. I won’t make you read all my personal highlights, but there are many examples like this.
There are so many reasons to say “no”. You are busy. You are tired. You have so much on your plate. There are hundreds of people vying for your time. You have goals. You have priorities. You have a family. You have friends. You don’t like networking. You hate LinkedIn and social media. You don’t have time for anything more.
None of these reasons are wrong, but if you want to experience great things, “yes” is your friend. If you are someone who always defaults to “no”, I’d encourage you to find a way to say “yes” a few more times. I don’t think you will regret it.
Of course, we also have to say “no” to many things… and that is the subject of next week’s post.
I love how the "Yes" not only changes the life of the person saying "Yes", but it also positively impacts the people receiving the "Yes". And for every 1 "yes", the impact of it can impact 1-1000's of people each time. I know this is true because I've seen your "Yes" lead to talks or stages that impacts countless people.
I know that for every "Yes", there has got to be at least 100 "No's", but even 1 extra "Yes" a week will present 52 opportunities to create an impact that otherwise would have stayed dormant, as well as 52 opportunities for 1-1000s of people each time to be impacted.
What a great read on the power of Yes. Especially from someone who I often go "How in the world does this man have the time to say Yes to that". Part of the reason why I jumped on the Principles book you recommended, and why I follow along for insights. When our house is in order, we can say Yes more, and make a impact beyond our own four walls.