Ask for Help

The field house was hot last Sunday afternoon as the incoming freshmen and their families gathered inside. The new students were to be officially welcomed by the university president. It had been a long and tiring day for our son as we moved him into his dorm room. Unfortunately (though understandably), he nodded off during the most helpful part of the speech.

"I have nine words of advice for each new class," the president said. "Go to class. Do the work. Ask for help." The last three words, he explained, were the most critical in assuring their success in the coming four years. He added that they shouldn't think less of themselves for needing help. The anecdote he told to illustrate his point hit home.

After sharing those same words of counsel with a new member of the university's board of trustees, the new trustee in turn shared with the president his own version of "Ask for help."

He had founded two successful companies and had always believed in asking for help, no matter its source. In one particularly difficult challenge, he recalled, his company was working with a client when he recognized that the most talented person working on the project was an employee of the client company.

Rather than struggle on, he requested the temporary reassignment of this skilled person to his team "to be sure we delivered the highest quality solution." He saw nothing wrong in asking for help. In fact, he saw it as a requirement of the job.

Such counsel flies in the face of the "not invented here" attitude, an approach that says, if you're the outside expert, your solution is always going to be best, regardless.

I've never believed that and I loathe working with people that do. In a similar vein, I have occasionally found that a client's approach works well. Why fix what isn't broken? My counsel after examining the situation closely is usually that they continue in that manner, though I may suggest a modification or two, as well as an appropriate follow-on methodology.

Managers and outside counsels should be honest enough to know when their solution is no better than another approach. Or, like the trustee's story, they should recognize when someone else is better qualified to drive towards the highest quality solution, and then seek their help.

We see this in play both within internal teams and when outsiders are brought in. In an internal environment, this can play out in a number of ways. Petty jealousies among peers can lead to a situation where, in pursuit of greater reward and recognition, the stronger-willed person downplays, denigrates or nit-picks a teammate's more elegant solution.

Sometimes, a manager wants to take credit for solving a problem, casting him/herself as the most talented and experienced person on the project, perhaps ignoring an employee's more appropriate solution or that person's superior talent. As I noted in a blog entry nearly a year ago:

The late great sportswriter Red Smith remembered his days at the old (and defunct) New York Herald-Tribune. Sports editor Stanley Woodward returned from World War 2 and set about building what was then and probably still is the best collection of sportswriters ever. "He was scouting for the best men he could get," Smith recalled. "Stanley was the best department head, perhaps the best all-around newspaperman I've ever known. Some sports editors, especially if they write a column, are afraid of competition. They want to be the big man of the paper. But Stanley's rule was, 'I don't want anyone who can't outwrite me'."

Those are sound words of advice, whether applied directly in regard to a manager's relationship with his/her direct reports, or in the case of the outsider. The important thing is the end. We should all be seeking the best possible solution - no matter the source - to the challenge at hand so that we can achieve the organization's business objectives.

Mature people - whether in business or in school - should take to heart the president's elaboration of his counsel as our son began his university education:

Recognize when you need help. Don't be so proud that you won't or can't ask for help. Know whom to turn to for help. And when you get that help, take advantage of it.

(By the way, we let our son know the wise advice he'd missed. My wife even wrote it on an index card and pinned it to his bulletin board.)