Good Advice from Gretchen: “It is OK to ask for help”

Gretchen over at the Happiness Project (one of my favorite blogs) offers the following bit of lovely advice: “One of my Secrets of Adulthood is "It's okay to ask for help," and zoikes, it really does work!.”

I was so taken by this sentence because I realize that it not only is a sign of healthy individuals, it is a sign of a healthy culture. About 10 years ago, I did an 18 month ethnography of IDEO with Andy Hargadon, and we were privileged to see people working in a remarkably healthy organizational culture. Over and over, we saw people who felt strong pressure to ask other people for help when they needed it, and to go to great lengths to give help to others who needed it.

To give you a sense of how this played-out, here is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense about a little snippet of organizational life at IDEO:

One of the main reasons that IDEO’s system works so well is the attitude its people have toward knowledge. We mentioned this “attitude of wisdom” in Chapter 1 as essential for practicing evidence-based management. Recall that wisdom is about “knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know.” This attitude enables people to act on their (present) knowledge while doubting what they know, so they can do things now, but can keep learning along the way. Wise people realize that all knowledge is flawed, that the only way to keep getting better at anything is to act on what you know now, and to keep “updating.”

……These elements stem from theory and research, but an episode at IDEO provides perhaps the best summary and explanation. Robert Sutton was sitting with two engineers, Larry Schubert and Roby Stancel, who were talking about designing a device for Supercuts, a chain of hair salons that specializes in inexpensive, fast haircuts. They were talking about a device that could be attached to an electric razor to vacuum away cut hair. We were meeting in front on Rickson Sun’s workstation. Rickson looked mildly disturbed as he shut his sliding door to muffle the noise from our meeting, a futile gesture because his cubicle was stylish, but had no roof and low walls. Rickson still looked a bit annoyed when he emerged minutes later to tell us that he had once worked on a product with key similarities to the device the Larry and Roby were designing – a vacuum system that carried away the fumes from a hot scalpel that cauterized skin during surgery. Rickson brought out a report describing different kinds of plastic tubing sold by vendors. Larry Schubert commented, “Once Rickson realized he could help us, he had to do it, or he wouldn’t be a good IDEO designer.”

This simple episode illustrates the attitude of wisdom and why it enables people to keep learning and systems to keep getting better. Larry and Roby are smart people, but knew that if they acted like know it alls, the design would suffer. They deferred to Rickson’s knowledge. They reacted with a kind of confident humility we saw many times at IDEO. When Rickson offered to help, they knew and he knew that – to improve the design – they had to listen to him, and follow-up on his offer to help in the future.

This happened about 10 years ago, but I still recall the “power” of IDEO’s culture, dragging Rickson out of his workstation to help Larry and Roby.

P.S. This post reminds me of my fellow faculty member at the d.school, Michael Dearing, as he is so good at helping everyone (especially students) and asking for help when he needs it. I am teaching a course on Innovation in Complex Organizations with Michael next term, and this is one of the reasons that I am looking forward to it.

Comments

[Kent S]

Michele and Jim McCarthy have done quite a bit of work on asking for help. Asking for help is a central lesson of their bootcamp course.
They did a podcast on it, see http://www.mccarthyshow.com and the podcast is here http://files.vroomsite.com/mccarthyshow/Podcasts/McShow111.mp3
Some of my best experiences began with a request for help.

[Shaun Kieran]

That’s a great post illustrating an exemplary workplace culture. What still eludes all of us is how they really get created. The obvious variable is top management and what truly gets communicated from above about quality as a goal, mistakes as opportunities to learn, minimizing virtually to zero the need to be a “brown noser”, etc.

What isn’t so obvious is the role key mid-managers or even veteran non-managers play as “culture carriers” - conveying their own enthusiasm for the work, disdain for wasteful, interpersonal nonsense, and no fear of arbitrary behavior from above. These folks don’t grow on trees, and are both the result of - and creators of - good workplaces.