Running through my feeds tonight and came across this quote from Seths Blog …
Do your work, your best work, the work that matters to you. For some people, you can say, “hey, its not for you.” Thats okay. If you try to delight the undelightable, you’ve made yourself miserable for no reason.
I’m not going to wax poetically about it, but it does raise some interesting thoughts given we have a DoIT value that stresses our intent to work to delight our users. Specifically …
3. Satisfy: We will work to delight our customers in the innovative delivery of our solutions and services.
Maybe it is an important thought to recognize that it can’t be done all the time and accept that? I’m not sure if that is defeatist or realistic. I wonder what people think.
I think we are being realistic when we recognize that we can’t delight all off our customers all the time. It would be defeatist if we recognized this fact therefore choosing not to even try to delight them at all.
I like that. I like that a lot.
Perhaps a good analogy is the “pursuit of happiness” that Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence? We’re not guaranteeing we can delight all of our users we’re expressing a lofty ambition that we will pursue delight, while recognizing that not everyone will be delighted all the time.
And as long as I am channeling old people I have to say that the quote harkens back to a quote (mis)attributed to Robert E Lee, “Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.” …
Our value expresses a duty to try and delight
Chuck, that could be one of the best comments ever left on a blog in the history of blogs 😉 … seriously, I like that what we are expressing is our desire to always delight. Committing to doing our work with that as a goal is the important part of the value.
Great post and great comments. To add yet another president’s quote, one that I’ve applied to my professional and personal life: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” -Thomas Jefferson