I love to get comments like this one from Sharon, a subscriber responding to a recent Improvement Point she received. Whether it’s in a workshop or an e-mail, comments like hers so wonderfully bring alive the point I’m trying to get across.

For those of you who don’t know, Improvement Points is a free subscription service that sends out short excerpts from one of my articles or books three times per week.

Here’s the original Improvement Point:

“For our own health and happiness, we must exercise our choice to let go. No matter how long we nurse a grudge, it won’t get better. When we bury the hatchet, we need to make sure we don’t keep a shovel handy. Life is too short — and likely to get even shorter — if like vultures, we feed on dead issues.”
– from Jim Clemmer’s article, “Choosing Our Poison or Choosing to Let Go” Read the full article now

Good Morning Jim,

I just wanted to say your article on ‘Choosing Our Poison or Choosing to Let Go.’ In my organization it is very evident there is mistrust and holding of grudges between the business and IT folks that support them. Even though there have been organizational changes and restructure of processes, so many ‘long timers’ can not let go of past history. During meetings of the minds I often start out by saying; ‘Let’s forget the past, we will focus on today’s issue at hand to determine the best approach to correct the problem and move forward. Together we will learn from this mistake without pointing fingers and document for next time.’ Most often this works, but there are some that need more time to change…

Sharon Amorth, Regina Saskatchewan