Years ago I worked with a man who was in his second career, working for a local governmental bureaucracy. His first career had been in the military as a base commander - an even bigger bureaucracy, within one of the nation’s very largest bureaucracies. And if there is anything we know about bureaucracies, it’s that job security and not-making-waves is at a far greater premium than “serving the customer” or “getting the job done.”

But Bob wasn’t your typical bureaucrat. He had a rule for anyone who worked under his command: You needed permission from a superior to tell anyone “Sorry, we can’t do that.”

Under Bob’s watch, if someone applying for service asked to do things a little differently than the norm, instead of saying, “Sorry, you’ll have to follow our rules,” his employees had to come up with a darned good justification for saying “no.” They never had to figure out how to justify an end result that benefitted both parties. The acceptable and expected answer was, “Let’s see how we can make this work.”

Imagine the power of that tiny shift in approach! Imagine every time the CEO of your organization brought a matter to the board, that the board’s first response was, “Let’s see how we can make this work!” Imagine every time the employees found a new idea they’d like to pursue, or a better process for doing their job, that the response from upper management was, “Great! Let’s see how we can make that work!”

Imagine never hearing, “Sorry, that’s the rules.” Imagine never hearing, “That’s not the way we do things around here.” Imagine never hearing, “Where do you think the money will come from for that?”

The difference between “I’ll bet we can” vs. “I know we can’t” is the difference between organizations who succeed wildly and those that flounder, working their tails off just to keep their heads above water. It’s the single most critical factor that keeps organizations struggling to maintain the current status year after year, rather than ever moving forward.

So this new fiscal year, as everyone is coming back from their summer vacations and getting ready to hunker down and get to work, let’s recognize all the possibilities the year ahead holds for us. And let’s adopt a new motto:

Let’s See How We Can Make That Work!