Tag Archives: communication

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Productivity & Self

How to Ask for Help…and Get an Answer

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I usually love giving people help – heck, it’s really how this site, When I Have Time, got started. I was helping friends with tech questions over email and Skype and I thought that if the same information helped just one other person, I was doubling my reach. The “Ask the Geek” questions are some of my favorite things to answer and are actual questions sent to me mainly by people I know.

On my food & travel site, Ms. Adventures in Italy, I also answered questions about moving to & living in Italy. I’ve since stopped; I’m not an immigration lawyer and most of the questions I was able to answer, I already have – which is what leads me to writing this post.

I get a lot of vague, long-winded, ridiculous, and desperate requests for help (across a variety of subjects) which lead me to believe the person has no idea who I really am and is probably spamming several people at once looking for those “magic beans” in the form of any answer which will magically save them.

Here’s an example of a request I find vague, inappropriate, and looking for magic beans:

I have found your website and blogs, very interesting. I am trying to promote our business more in the States / Canada. Do you have any suggestions or ideas for me? Hope to hear from you!

Sure! Let me set aside an hour or two of my time to craft a well-thought-out answer for you. Or not. So this post isn’t for those people. I can’t help you find the magic beans.

But what about you? You’re a normal, hard-working, thoughtful person and you have a valid question which you’d like to ask someone to answer for you.

Here’s how to ask for help, and get an answer.

1. Do your homework

Start by doing your homework. And I don’t mean the homework on your actual question – by the time you approach someone for help you should have put your question through the wringer and know it backwards and forwards. You should have definitely tried Google.com first.

What I really mean is to do your homework on the information the person you’re asking for help has already made available to you.

Here’s a crib sheet for you to help you do that homework on a helpful site:

  • Categories and tags – If they use categories and tags, they’ve already grouped relevant information for you, the reader. Click through to the relevant pages and back-read all of their related articles.
  • Recommended sites and books – they may recommend another site and/or book which can answer your question better than they can – check them out!
  • Ebooks, downloads, and newsletters - the author may also have their own ebooks, articles for download, and newsletters you can sign up for to get more information. Make sure you look for these as they have pre-packaged some information just for you!
  • Look for Popular Posts - Popular posts will probably tell you what other people have appreciated about the site’s content. Maybe some of that information will be helpful in an indirect way.
  • Scour their Archives - I open the Archives page of any site and do a search on the page for keywords that might answer my question – you do the same! If they have a site search, that’s even better.
  • Read their contact page - if they have a contact page, they probably have taken the time to let you know how to contact them properly, what things they’re interested in hearing about, and what they aren’t. Note this well. This isn’t mean, it’s a way for them to save time, and for you as well – don’t waste your time asking people for help who clearly can’t or won’t give it! If they don’t have a Contact page, check out their About page, too.

2. Limit your questions

While I love hearing the stories behind a question that comes to me, if I see an email which goes “past the fold” (beyond the viewable part of my screen) and is peppered liberally with question marks, I can assume that the person hasn’t done some homework in #1, they are asking me to take on the majority of the homework part, or they don’t really know what their question is.

Limit your questions. One is best. Two or three is pushing it depending on the context, and any more than that is probably asking too much. Limit your questions, so you can be respectful of the other person’s time. If they want to continue helping, they’ll ask their own questions, or ask you to give them more information.

3. Be specific and realistic

Since you did your homework in #1, you know what information this person has already shared publicly with you via their site. You’ve narrowed down your question and your introduction/background in #2 and now you need to do a reality check – is my question specific enough this person can answer it, and am I being realistic by asking them to answer it?

  • Is your question something this person can answer? (i.e., If you have a legal question, are they a lawyer?) 
  • Are you asking for a specific piece of information / advice? (is it a yes/no question? Have you narrowed down the question enough so they can give you a single answer or starting point?)
  • Can the person answer you in just a few minutes? (don’t ask someone to write you an answer that requires a book, or even a blog post. Keep it short and sweet.)
You should have a good idea of all of these answers before you ask your own question. 

4. Tell me why ME

This is #4, but it might as well be #1 in order of importance. Why are you writing ME? Why do you think I’m the best person to answer your question?

If someone is going to help you, they’d like to think they’re not one of the many people you’re spamming in the hopes of getting a response. Why not let them know? Was it something you read on their site, in their biography, or was it even somewhere where they wrote they’re open to these sorts of requests?

And secondly, in choosing this person, how sure are you they are the correct person to answer this question for you, out of all the resources available to you?

Hopefully in the process of answering this for yourself, you’ll realize that the person really is the right person to ask, and make sure you let them know you’ve done your homework. But if not, think about not sending that email.

5. Limit your follow-up

If the person never answers you, they might not be interested in answering you. It’s probably not personal (they most likely don’t know you!) They also may be super busy, they may not have seen your email, or your email may have gone into spam (it does happen).

Depending on the urgency and content of your email, I would say you should wait at least a week before writing them again. And write them only once more, with the contents of the first mail and a short 1-sentence note introducing the mail which might have gotten lost. No more than that. Don’t rewrite your entire story in hopes that it will be more appealing (wasting the person’s time as they try to remember where they just read a similar story like this), don’t email them multiple times, don’t bug them via other social networks if you send that second message.

If the person still doesn’t answer, move on.

6. Offer to pay for the help

This last step isn’t a last resort. Rather, it’s a reminder that other people’s time is valuable, too. Make sure you take advantage of any free resources available, and also utilize those paid resources when you really need some good answers.

Hopefully in step 1 you’ve discovered if the person offers consultation on a paid basis, and what that entails. If they do offer paid consultations, seriously consider working with them. If they are the best person to answer your question, why not pay them for their time? If the answer is valuable to you, then the time spent putting together the information is valuable, too.

Not everyone can answer questions for free, or their free answers may seem short because they are purposely limiting their time allowed to respond for free advice. Again, don’t take it personally, and respect their time, too.

What about you? Can you share some tips about what makes you actually want to answer a request for help?

Here are three other articles on email etiquette and asking for help which I found inspiring:

Photo by Dimitri N

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Productivity & Self

Stop Sabotaging Your Own Success: A Manifesto

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photo by Peter Kaminsky

If you’re new here, you should probably read my biography just to give you a better sense of who I am. In short: I do a lot of stuff. I’m curious. I love learning. I take risks. I speak my mind. I dare.

The risks I take are reinforced by a belief that I owe it to myself to at least try. I’ve always seen myself as a bit of a Jack of all trades, rather than an expert in one subject, but I’ve come to believe that’s a blessing rather than a curse. Releasing myself from the aim of being an expert or being perfect at something means that I have the complete and utter freedom to try. And fail. Hell yes, fail. Even often!

But trying, definitely.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking with (girl)friends about what’s next for them. I mentioned that I wanted to have a Vision Board workshop for this reason (which had to be postponed due to crazy November travel for me) because I want to help them start to think about “what’s next?” without hearing “not until I...” or “maybe when I...” or “I’m not ready” or “after...” or the worst: “I don’t know.”

Friends, and strangers reading this, listen to me: Continue reading →

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Presentations, Tech Talk, Website & Blog

Digital Curation: The New Frontier of Knowledge

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This past Saturday I presented “Digital Curation: The New Frontier of Knowledge” at KnowCamp, an Italian BarCamp in Modena about knowledge and the web.

If you’re not familiar with the Ignite format, it’s very exciting for both speakers and spectators. 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds each slide. It’s a timing nightmare and you’re always racing against the clock, but it’s a great exercise to really concentrate on the meat of your presentation and remove the extras. (I gave another Ignite earlier this year on the New Digital Company: Distributed, Online, Transparent)

Continue reading →

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Tech Talk, Website & Blog

Don’t be afraid of bloggers: They’re Communication Start-ups

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Last weekend I had the opportunity to hear Jay Elliot, a former Sr. VP at Apple, speak about the book he wrote: “The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a new generation.”

Besides appearing to be one of the only people at the event who read the book blurb and a little background on Jay (and knew he hasn’t worked at Apple or with Steve Jobs in 25 years), I was keenly interested in his insights about Steve Jobs’ leadership methods back in the 1980s, when Apple was just getting started. This is the meat of his book and something I looked forward to speaking about him with, rather than asking his opinion about the iPad 2 and products he had very little influence or insight on.

I asked three questions during the event, and I’ll share the answers to two of them below:

1. Given that you believe much of Apple’s success is because Steve Jobs acted as the “Product Czar,” meaning he had complete control and influence on the product from all levels and to the finest details, do you think a similar level of excellence could be achieved in open source? (I had introduced myself as working at WordPress.com)

Obviously, I knew the answer was no, but I guess I had to hear it from his lips. We’ll prove you wrong :)

2. The second question I asked was about finding and recognizing talent – Jay was offered a job by Steve Jobs after a chance meeting in a coffee shop. A short conversation ensued, and a few weeks later he was offered a job. How do you recognize talent when you see it? What are you looking for, in just a short conversation?

He mentioned that the most important thing is how the person talks about the future of your product / company – is there a future? Do they have ideas? Are they thinking into the future or can they only speak about what’s happened already?

I think Jay has a lot of insights to share, and I look forward to reading more of the book (I read a few chapters already, and had watched a talk he gave earlier this week so I knew a little more about him), but one of his comments really floored me that I feel it has to be addressed.

At a certain point, he asked, so you’re bloggers? What does that mean to be a blogger? (The event was a meeting with journalists & bloggers) He then shared a story with us about a blogger who had written a review of his book (critically, I can only assume) and Jay was surprised by the fact that the post was published at 3:30am. He ended the story with, “Wow, get a life” (to the blogger).

Whoa.

This really shocked me, especially coming from someone who works in Silicon Valley and in technology (and who should know better by now). Of course as the spontaneous spokesperson for an entire 18 million bloggers on WordPress, I felt I had to speak up.

Blogging, I said, is a freedom of expression, and can be very professional (& many journalists blog, too), and I wanted to add: there’s nothing to be afraid of, really.

But what I should have done was framed bloggers in the context of something he’d understand since he’s a serial entrepreneur who’s worked in Silicon Valley his whole life.

Bloggers are communication start-ups.

The “product” that these start-ups sell is content – ideas, thoughts, opinions, and yes, journalistic or investigative reporting at times.  The product is fragile at the beginning, and probably only as strong as their already-known reputation, but the more they write, bounce their ideas off others in a sort of “elevator pitch”, the more solid their blog’s voice and product becomes. They gain readers “consumers”, who believe in their words & content, and these consumers provide feedback about the product, or better yet they vote with their feet and never come back.

Some blogs serve a niche market, some are more widespread. They often will not reach the “IPO” state of success and sell to the AOLs of the world like The Huffington Post & TechCrunch (yep, both blogs!), but can remain content with their small, rather captivated market. Their most valuable raw material is time, rather than money. Intellectual property is the most important asset of these start-ups.

Can there be misreporting, lack of professionalism, and incorrect, biased or ignorant content on a blog? Sure. The power and beauty of the Internet is you can also decide where to direct your attention and how you will or won’t engage with these sources. You can dislike, disagree or discredit a blogger just like you can any other news source. Of course, some others may also agree with them.

In the same conversation, Jay also expressed some concern about his young children being on the Internet and exposed to all kinds of information online and how trustworthy they could be.

And to that I say, teach them the meaning of critical thinking, evaluating what they read, weighing facts, and comparing and forming their own opinions just like in anything else, and you’ll see that they’ll be discerning individuals no matter the news source, and maybe one day, they too will come out…as bloggers.

Check out Beast of Traal.com’s opinion on what the difference between journalists and bloggers are.

PS: It’s interesting to note that Jay’s site runs on WordPress. Welcome to the family!

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Presentations, Tech Talk

The New Digital Company: Distributed, Online, and Transparent

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Update: I gave a similar presentation at LeWeb about the Future Way of Working: the Distributed Company.

I gave a presentation in Italian at the Digital Communication Forum in Milan in February, and I spoke about “The New Digital Company: Online, Distributed, and Transparent.” I wanted to make those slides available immediately, but since the talk was an Ignite, a flash talk given in 5 minutes with 20 slides that appear on the screen for only 15 seconds, the slides are usually more visual than descriptive, so in lieu of recording my speech in English, I’ll walk you through a few of my slides.

At the bottom are both the complete Italian and English slide decks in Slideshare in case you feel the need to share or embed them. :) There’s also a video of my presentation in Italian available.

The first few slides were information about me (in a nod to Italian national identity card design) and the company I work for, Automattic, which is obviously a huge inspiration for the presentation. I tried to extract the three main points and describe them independently of our company, and how they could be applied to any “new digital company.”

The first point is “Be distributed.” The subtext of this slide is that the definition of a company is changing: it is no longer an office, a set of desks, and meeting rooms. The company is how and where you make it, and having a distributed company is more appealing than ever.

Automattic is a distributed company, with 75 employees in 25 countries and 65 cities. The highest concentrations of employees is in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have a Lounge that is not an office but an occasional event and meetup location. The second-highest concentration of Automatticians is in Sofia, Bulgaria (4).

Why should a company be distributed? As our CEO Toni Schneider said, “You can hire great people, wherever you find them,” allowing your company to grow organically where talent is to be found. The company receives applications from people all around the world, who would never have dreamed of applying if it weren’t a distributed company. Employees are not forced to move to a specific city with the company’s office and uproot their whole life in order to work for a great company.

Further still is the freedom a distributed company allows the employee to construct his/her work environment, from the location to the timing. The concept of: being in the office = productiveness is no longer applicable, and the flexibility allows the employee to work when they feel more productive, to take breaks when they aren’t, and experience other environments if desired. Of course, this has to be balanced with the demands of clients if the worker is client-facing, and also if the employee prefers to be around when the bulk of the company is online and tranascting business (many do, and adjust their schedules accordingly no matter what time zone they live in).

A subtext of working from anywhere and not working in an office is that proactiveness and managing one’s time becomes of utmost importance. (the photo is actually one of my colleagues’ photo – he often posts his interesting desks from wherever he is).

The second main point is “Be online.” Many companies feel that they are online because they have a website where they communicate about or sell their products and they’re present on a few social networks.

Be Online is about shifting the entire inner workings of the company to online – from discussions to decisions to documentation. Note: I don’t consider email online as it’s generally not consultable by others.

This is one of my favorite graphs which illustrates how a digital company can communicate internally – most of our communication happens on internal blogs, followed by IRC (a private company chat), Skype for personal, 1-on-1 communication, and a small percentage for email, which is mainly outgoing with clients.

Interviews, trial projects, and training all happen online, which reduces the need for in-person events, and it can mobilize a greater part of the company to participate since the geographic restriction is removed.

Here’s a picture of a traditional meeting – 6 people sitting around a table with computers open, dazed looks on their faces, and surely they’ve been in this meeting much longer than necessary.

Our meetings, when we actually have them, look more like this – different parts of the world connected by Skype for brief moments. Thanks to Skype video we see each other, too, but our team meeting is once a week and more about talking about things we didn’t discuss online and generally hearing how everyone is doing, outside of work, too. It’s more of a human meeting than one with action items, and we try to keep it short, just 30 minutes. Everything else is a non-meeting.

The third point is “Be Transparent.” Transparency plays a big role in a distributed company because physical distance between employees becomes less important than the distance between the employee and the information they need to get their job done, including the discussions and decisions I mentioned before.

Our internal blogs are broken down into teams, cross-functional projects, and also watercooler blogs which are outlets for us to chat and have fun, too. They serve not only as an intranet & knowledge, but they are our primary communication tools.

This works because as I mentioned before, discussions and decisions all happen ON these tools, and if a decision is made on IRC or in email, the decision is brought back to the blogs so there’s a record and further discussion can happen – the blogs remain the de facto place where decisions happen. If you have all these tools available but people revert to email for a decision, email will be the functioning tool.

All of these blogs can be accessed by any of the employees, no matter what their current projects, team or interest. If a systems team member wants to follow the design blog because they are interested and/or have something to contribute, they can.

The nature of these blogs means that all the content is searchable, available real-time, documented, and basically all those things I mention on the slide.

I think the results are obviously more important – it creates a collaborative environment where discussions can happen in real-time, from any part of the company, and results in a lot of distributed ideas, instant diffusion of information, and the ability to contribute at any level. The downside of having all this information is that it can be too much noise but there are a lot of ways to combat this including limiting one’s subscriptions to only the most applicable blogs, filtering messages and content based on keywords, and receiving alerts any time your name or a keyword you follow (like your product or team name) is mentioned on any of the blogs.

Of course, I couldn’t help but pimp the fact that we use WordPress to power these blogs, and not only WP but a specific theme that enables frontend posting and comments are immediately expanded and visible (comparable to a Facebook or Twitter environment – the backend is of no importance to most contributors) – read more about the P2 theme here (hint: it’s free!) and how P2 changed Automattic.

A final way we keep up to date with what’s going on in the company are monthly Town Halls with the President of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg. Often special guests (other employees) are available and any employee has the power to ask a question and hear the answer during the transmission.

The last point in the New Digital Company is “Work Hard, Play Hard.” A distributed company means that individuals don’t often see each other, so when they do get together, it’s important to remember to enjoy being with each other as well as all the hard work you do when you’re not together. Many meetups are spent doing fun activities and working on short projects that are outside the normal work scope.

A few days after I gave my presentation at the Digital Communication Forum in Milan, Automattic posted on the WordPress.com more information about How WordPress.com is made, which includes information about how our distributed company works. You might want to check that out as well.

A video about how the P2 theme works that’s worth a watch:

Below, the files on Slideshare – in English:

The New Digital Company

and in Italian:
La Nuova Azienda Digitale