I wanted to send a thank you to Robert Ford, for his column entitled “The Can’t-do ethic can have serious consequences” ( ComputerWorld Canada, Aug. 10, page 13). I especially liked the options and firmness of the recommendations.

Over the last 4 months I have had the “pleasure” of being project manager for a team of tech people trying to deploy a CRM system. To say the least I encountered many of the similar attitudes that the project leader on a suicide mission alluded to.

I had tech team members indicating that the technology was terrible, hard to work with, they could build things easier and in 2X, 4X, whatever the number of times faster if they could code it themselves.

Team members indicated that things were not possible and the toolkit is so very restrictive. Often times when members would come to me saying “I can’t”.(And after a while I started to track these attitudes, I would say, “Well have you thought about it this way or what about this?” Or, “What else would you suggest, this is the end goal that we would like to get to… is there another highway to take?” These people were usually stumped and just went back into “its not possible” mode.

The attitude has changed somewhat, but its underpinnings still creep through here and there. Based on this experience the firm that I work for will be including a new value tenet in their values mantra for the entire company relating to bringing solutions, not only problems. Additionally we are trying to implement and force key communication requirements and planning sessions so that technical members understand that the internal enterprise, in this case, is the end consumer and that customer will be just as demanding as an external customer – and should be.

Again. Thank you.

Tracey Strauss

Toronto