The Best Answer to Give to (Almost) Any Question

Use it in your work life, personal life, and everywhere in between

Mike Sturm

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Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Early on in my sales training, I had to sit down with engineers and learn about the technical side of what the company sells. The company I work for places a lot of emphasis on its technical aptitude and sells based on industry-leading technical services. So when I began talking with the senior engineers, I expected some definitive and informative answers to most of my questions.

Instead, I kept getting the same answer to quite a bit of them. In fact, I got the answer so often that it became a kind of inside joke among those of us training with the engineers. The answer I kept getting was: “it depends.”

‘It Depends.’

I would ask the senior engineer what he would recommend in this case or that. He would say “it depends.” Inevitably, I would ask “on what?” To which he’d often reply, “what are the customer’s goals? What are their constraints? How strict are they about making changes?” And so on.

When I first heard it, I thought is was a cop-out — a way of avoiding blame if a recommendation was wrong. But as I continued to receive that answer, I realized that it wasn’t a cop-out. In fact, it was a sneaky way of encouraging me to stop looking for…

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Mike Sturm

Creator: https://TheTodaySystem.com — A simpler personal productivity system. Writing about productivity, self-improvement, business, and life.