All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success
Wayne Baker
Currency/Random House (January 2020)
Tools for being more successful at whatever you do. “Then anything is possible — even miracles”
So, what is the most important skill to achieve success?
Wayne Baker responds: “Based on research that I and others have conducted, plus twenty-five years of business consulting and teaching experience, I’ve identified eight main reasons why we won’t give ourselves permission to ask for things we need. Understanding these obstacles can empower you to overcome, circumvent, or avoid them.”
None of the reasons is a revelation, nor does Baker make any such claim. Almost anyone reading this book, however, has encountered or suggested one or more of them at one time or another:
1. Underestimating others’ willingness and ability to help
2. Over-reliance on self-reliance
3. Concern about perceived social costs
4. Lack of psychological safety in the given workplace
5. Organizational systems, procedures, or structure are in the way
6. Not knowing what to request or how to request it
7. Fear that the “right” to request help hasn’t been “earned”
8. Fear of seeming selfish
All are examined in Chapter 2, Pages 16-34. I wholly agree with John Shook (cited by Baker) that changing behavior is necessary to change values, attitudes, and culture. Shook nails it: “It is easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting.”
Baker has high hopes and great expectations for those who read this book, especially supervisors with direct reports entrusted to their care. However, almost anyone can master the tools and techniques needed to give themselves permission to ask for what they need.
I commend Baker on his brilliant use of reader-friendly devices, notably “Summary” and “Reflections and Actions” sections that conclude Chapters 2-7. I also highly recommend a careful reading of an Appendix (“Mini-GAme Design for ‘Get Merry with Green and Red’ at Zingerman’s Service Network”) and 26 pages of annotated “Notes.”
These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Baker’s coverage:
o Asking for help (Pages 3-34)
o Reciprocity Ring (6-7, 31-33, and 103-107)
o Understanding of other people’s willingness and ability to provide help (16-20)
o Cycle of giving and receiving (30-31, 33-34, 37-38, and 40-41)
o Adam Grant (31-33 and 103-105)
o Recognition and rewards (36-37 and 146-149)
o Laws of Giving and Receiving (39-52)
o “Lone Wolves” (41-42 and 48-50)
o Translating needs into requests that satisfy SMART criteria (71-75)
o Asking for what you need (55-86)
o Teams (87-116)
o Psychological safety (91-98)
o IDEO’s three-step “flights” (94-96)
o Asking across boundaries (117-145)
o Jim Mallozzi (120-122, 130-131, and 134-135)
o Cross-collaboration workshops (124-126 and 153-154)
o Gratitude walls (154-156)
o Technology to ask across boundaries (133-145)
o Collaborative technology platforms (139-144)
o Gainsharing programs (175-176)
True, “all you have to do is ask” but only after you have given thorough and rigorous thought to key issues while completing a process that determines (a) precisely what is needed, (b) why it is needed, and (c) how the assistance will help to achieve the given results.
Much of the information, insights and counsel that Wayne Baker provides can also be of substantial value to those who are asked for assistance. Help someone requests from as well as help you request must be — as he suggests — “specific, meaningful, action-oriented, real, and time-bound.”
For some people, this may be the most helpful book they can read “to master the most important skill for success.”