Tag: organization

“I have no opinion”

One of the most powerful and underused tools in any manager’s toolkit is “I have no opinion”. In fact, it’s useful for anyone who is asked to provide input on a thing.

Unless you’re contributing real value to a question — don’t answer it. Unless you can really answer “why do you hold this opinion” — unless you can really justify your position on something — don’t respond.

“I have no opinion” is polite. It means “I’m not going to clutter your head up with a non-valuable bunch of words.” It says “I have confidence in your ability to make the right decision.” It’s rewarding to the other person. It’s empowering.

See “Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?” for a great in-depth discussion on this.

Thanks Adam Savage

I saw this video of Adam Savage talking at The Last Hope this past year. I recommend it. It’s awesome to see how dedicated he is, and what it takes to produce such great stuff.

Other than getting a preview of (then) new Mythbuster footage and getting  to see a downloaded AVI of The Dark Knight on Adam’s hard drive, I really liked when he showed his projects folder. It was cool seeing that he works on things when he feels like it, and then saves his progress so he can come back later.

I’ve been trying to get more organized lately (what with the Getting Things Done/Agile planning at Cloudspace and all), so it’s something that stuck out for me, that I wanted to share with you.