Scott Berkun

13 Responses

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• Anton - April 6, 2009 at 3:48 am #

• When I hear from my friends the same thing – “we do not have time”, I usually say that it is not about time but it is rather the problem of desire, weather the person *wants* to get the things done or he/she doesn’t

  
  

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• David C-L - April 6, 2009 at 4:35 am #

• I say “we don’t have time.” And yes, I say it to avoid a conversation, to blow the person off and move on. I contend that sometimes– frequently– that’s a more productive choice than telling someone their idea “stinks” or is a “low priority” or even that I screwed up. It’s a convenient political shorthand.

  Sure, it’s bad to use “we don’t have time” as a reason to exclude good ideas from consideration. But ideas which arrive late and for whatever reason don’t contribute to a project’s primary goals? I think sometimes those conversations NEED to be avoided.

  
  

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• Chris - April 6, 2009 at 6:07 am #

• The phrase that drives me nuts is “Best practices”. It almost always means I’m telling you what to do, and nothing you can do or say will make me change my mind, so live with it. What’s worse is “industry best practice”, without specifying which industry, and without saying whether my industry falls within the class of industries referred to. Drives me wild… I’m betting I’m not the only one, too.

  
  

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• Mark Prins - April 6, 2009 at 8:14 am #

• Over the past years I quite often heard the following start of a sentence being said to myself, colleagues, customers, etc:

  “I (or we) realy love/appreciate/like/welcome what you have done, but…”

  This sentence always ends in something done ‘wrong’, which was actually the point he/she/they wanted to make.

  Not only is the sentence negative judgement in a gift-wrapping, but most of the time it also feels like they are trying to wave away the good things done as being acknowledged (albeit very briefly).

  Most of the time it results in the receiving party to become offended and will start defending his point of view and the dialog comes grindingly to a halt.

  
  

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• Scott - April 6, 2009 at 9:27 am #

• David C-L: I agree with you. It’s a shorthand and it works a lot of the time (And I suspect I’ve used it more often than I think :)

  But I’d never let someone get away with using it on me for something important.

  
  

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• August - April 6, 2009 at 9:45 am #

• Great Post !

  Some answers to new idea question that drives me nuts:
  - Later
  - I put it in the 2 do list (after 238 items);
  - No;
  - Make some joke about the idea;
  - (no answer) or um-hum;
  Some common phrases that drives me nuts:
  - We don’t have money for that;
  - It’s too expensive, lets buy the cheaper one;
  - No, let’s take it easy, first we sit on our butts for three months then we see what to do next;
  - (After sitting on a problem for 4+ months instead taking any action or delegating to someone) WE NEED TO DO IT NOW! ITS PRIORITY! OUR LIVES DEPENDS ON IT!

  (Sorry about the bad english, not my native language)

  
  

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• Neil C. Obremski - April 6, 2009 at 3:08 pm #

• I am in a bit of a lead position, and when people start getting afield of the main focus I tell them to save it for next quarter. If they’re dedicated enough to the concept, they’ll write it out and put it into our bug tracker or email for persistence. I try to remember what people suggested, mostly to give credit where credit is due if we DO do it … that’s a lot of do-do!

  
  

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• Scott - April 6, 2009 at 10:43 pm #

• Neil: That’s a great trick. “We don’t have time for it now, but we may have time for it later. Put it on this list”.

  Of course then you do have to go back and look at the list later, but I found sometimes people forget :)

  
  

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• Jason - April 7, 2009 at 9:39 am #

• “We do it that way because that’s the way we’ve always done it”

  *sigh*

  
  

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• suba - April 8, 2009 at 12:58 am #

• When someone tells me this, I usually reply ‘It’s never about time, it’s always about priorities’.

  
  

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• Mike - April 9, 2009 at 2:52 pm #

• “Strategic”, as though it implied a strategy.

  
  

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• Rolf - April 18, 2009 at 4:51 am #

• “we NEED to do this and that”, without providing any reason.
  “we NEED to do this and that”, meaning “I want someone to pick up that task and guess about my goals, but I won’t assign it.”

  
  

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• Kamona - November 13, 2009 at 8:45 pm #

• Cool! I completely agree with this. I often tell this to my friends and family, and it usually irritates them, only because they know I’m right. :P