Being a Warrior of Ideas and Improvement Takes Courage
As Jon Morrow wrote in this heart-wrenching story, “If you want to succeed, you can’t wait for the world to give you attention…You have to be a warrior.”
We don’t often think about ourselves walking into work each day as warriors. But I think we are. We are warriors of ideas and warriors of improvement. If we demand greatness of ourselves, our teammates, and our organizations, we are warriors in the best sense—warriors who bring ideas to life and positive change to our organizations.
Being a warrior takes courage. We won’t always be confident, but we have to act anyway. We won’t always have perfect knowledge, but we have to act anyway and learn as we go. We won’t always want to do the work, but we have to act anyway and push through it.
As Seth Godin pointed out in his blog “This is the best I can do”:
... countless projects go unlaunched, improvements hidden, thoughts unstated—because the person behind the idea is hiding behind the false understanding that their work isn't good enough yet.
This is why great work takes courage. As business analysts, we can always find a reason to hold ourselves back. We can always find another tweak to make, another problem to solve, or another way to approach the problem. You don’t even have to be a perfectionist to fall into this trap.
The question isn’t whether or not this could be better. The question is “Will making this change improve things from where they are today?” And if the answer is yes, then the question is “Do I have the courage to act, right here and right now, and own the result?"
The more people who act, the more positive change gets created. It’s as simple as that.
Whether you are a business analyst transitioning from requirements gathering to elicitation, a developer proposing a process improvement that will reduce defects, or a quality assurance professional ensuring fighting for the resources to ensure true quality, your organization needs you to step up.
There is simply too much to improve and too many problems to solve for us to wait until later.
