Is a Yes Attitude same as Can-Do?

Lately, I have been reading about the new management buzzwords around Yes Attitude and for the longest time I really couldn't see any difference between the "Yes Attitude" and what we used to call a "can-do" attitude in the old days. Whether you have a good day or bad all depends on your attitude we would say. But then I read Guy Kawasaki's blog on the topic and decided I needed to give it one more try.

I did a test - but instead of using a work situation I tried it with my 4 year old grandson. Our disagreements usually center around meals - his standard response when offered food is "I'm not hungry" and a scoot to the opposite side of the room and I generally scoot after him with little success at least as measured by amount of food consumed. So this time I said Yes - ok. lets do something else. The difference was not just saying it while having a hidden agenda of getting him to eat later (this kid has a sixth sense you wouldn't believe). I did need to bring up the topic later again but I would say the yes attitude, i.e. delay the negotiation till the recipient is in a different frame of mind versus the can-do attitude which is lets get it done now since its a "win-win" delivered a better result.

So yeah, I decided a "Yes attitude" is different - its about aligning people; the can-do is about aligning the job at hand. What do you think?