If you don’t ask for it, don’t complain if you don’t get it.

Unless I’m just speaking to hear the sound of my own voice or to pass the time away, I am saying something for some purpose. That purpose can either be implied or explicit. I’ve found it’s a lot more effective to be honest with myself and others, and explicit about what that purpose is. Asking “What specific change do I want?” gives me a moment to reflect on that purpose.

Nearly always I am trying to solve some problem for myself or someone else. But the specific thing I am trying to achieve in the moment can take on a variety of forms. For instance, I could be asking someone to…

• …make a decision.
• …behave in a way that differs from how they’ve behaved in the past.
• …to deliver or improve some specific, measurable result.

I am asking for help. 

I am asking for someone to take responsibility, in whole or in part, for solving some problem I have. I am specifically giving them authority over something valuable to me.

In order to decide how much authority I’m willing to give, I can ask myself…

• How much do I trust this person? I need confidence that this person can deliver what I need. How sure am I that they’ll come through? How big of a problem can I be sure they’ll be able to handle?
• How much I’m willing to ask for? I am asking someone to invest their time or resources in helping me solve a problem. How big of a burden am I willing to place on this person?

If I run out of formula for the baby and I find myself at the drugstore in the middle of the night speaking to a cashier, I’m going to give that person very little authority over my problem. I am going to ask for them to help me by selling me a specific amount of a specific type of formula for a specific price. I am not going to ask them to help me solve my broader problem of feeding a hungry, tired baby. Nor am I looking to have the cashier join me in my longer term mission of raising a healthy child. All I’m willing to trust them with and ask them for is conducting a minor transaction. I’ll worry about the rest.

The more I trust someone with a bigger part of my problem, the more responsibility I have for making sure they understand it.

If I’m only asking for a very narrow solution, they don’t need to know the whole problem. In fact, it would be counter-productive to explain it. I need to make it as easy as possible to help. But in either case, one thing is certain: They cannot read my mind.

• I can’t just say “I want you to write better code.” I need to be specific about the problem I want solved. I want to meet specific performance or memory constraints. I want to reduce the amount of time we spend on support requests over the next year by half. I need to be clear about what results I want.
• I can’t just say “Hey! Here’s a cool tool I found.” What precisely do I expect to happen? If I would like someone to spend an hour or twenty evaluating it, that’s exactly what I need to say. I need to be clear that there are actually results I am expecting.
• I can’t ever say “Someone should do something about this.” That’s just another way of saying that no one will do anything about it. Who do I really expect to do something? What do I actually expect them to do? I need to accept that I am owning the problem and that I am asking for help.

Asking “What specific change do I want?” is hardest when I’m angry. It’s hardest to remember that everything that happened before right now is a sunk cost. It’s hardest to be generous and really trust. It’s hard to ask for anything at all. It’s best if I don’t get angry.

Asking “What specific change do I want?” works best when I’m confident if I gave my answer to someone completely unfamiliar with the problem, like a freelancer, they’d have a reasonable chance to deliver what I need.

Asking “What specific change do I want?” is not really about getting what I expect. What I expect is boring. It’s more often about getting something that exceeds my expectations. Which is very hard to do unless you know what they are in the first place.

People are creative. 

If I give someone a tool to solve a very specific, narrow problem, someone will use it for something I never intended that is probably way better than its original purpose. But if I give someone a tool to solve too many general problems, they’ll quickly discover all the reasons why it doesn’t work for theirs. And hunt me down to tell me.