I happened across a video of Tony Robbins at TED that was pretty inspiring. One of his lines really rang true with me personally:
Resources versus Resourcefulness
One of the most fulfilling jobs I ever had was being an Integration Consultant for ExactTarget. At the time, ExactTarget had a fairly limited application programming interface (API) but our clientele was growing in sophistication and automation. Every day was a meeting with a client who had a very complex problem, and my job was to solve the problem using our simple API.
Much of my success at the time was that I always figured out a way to accomplish the end goal. If the API didn’t support a specific method, I would use combinations of data and calls to overcome it. Sometimes the solutions were pretty ingenious (and took a brain trust to solve). We used to drive some of the production staff nuts because our solutions would make millions of API calls to accomplish the task.
Key to my continued success is that I rarely say ‘no’, if ever. Sometimes you need to modify the path to get to the destination. A path is a resource. If it doesn’t exist, you need to be resourceful and build your own!
Not having resources is an excuse not to get things done. Resourcefulness is the ability to find a means to get something done, regardless of resources!
Here’s the full Tony Robbins presentation on TED. Warning: He does use some very colorful expletives.
Thanks to Angela Maiers for the find!
