Try 'Let's Talk'

Computerworld - What's the easiest answer to give to a user's request? No. It's short, it's to the point, and it ends the conversation. It gets the user out of your face and lets you get back to your real work. Besides, saying no feels so good.
What's the second-easiest answer to give a user? Yes. It's not as short and sweet as that powerful, muscle-flexing no, but it does close the discussion -- whether you're giving the user permission or making a commitment that you can always decide later not to keep.
And what's the hardest answer? "Let's talk."
We hate that kind of answer, don't we?
No and yes are the zero and one of business. We IT people like to believe we think in zeros and ones. That's silly -- we're capable of much more complex thinking than that. At the very least, we can think in strings of zeros and ones.
But we do love that binary simplicity. No and yes are simple.
That's why they're practically useless to us.
Look, the business and technology challenges we face today are way too complex for that. We don't control technology anymore. We can't, because users can and will drag in whatever consumer-grade technology they think will help them do their jobs.
So they'll work from home on unsecured networks. They'll smuggle in Wi-Fi access points. They'll copy truckloads of confidential data to handheld computers and DVD-ROMs and memory sticks.
They'll download and install and come to depend on software they find on the Internet. They'll build their own critical applications in a spreadsheet or database. They'll work up their own service-oriented architectures by constantly accessing outside Web sites for information and functionality they need.
And that's just regular users. That doesn't include the Rube Goldberg contraptions that real power users can string together nowadays using freeware utilities, cell phones on steroids and whatever hit the shelves last week at CompUSA, Best Buy and Circuit City.
Users just plain control a lot of IT today. Which means uncontrollable IT complexity is what we're stuck with. And we can't crack that complexity with a simple no or yes.
If we say no, users will use this stuff anyway. We can try chasing it down and ripping it out, but they'll just get better at hiding it. And we'll spend all our time playing cops and robbers instead of putting IT to work for the business.
If we say yes -- if we give them permission to use whatever high-tech tools they