Ask (Kindly) for Help

In project management unexpected problems are, well, expected. You know someone will kick you, the questions are: who, when and where? Hardware vendor, right now, sending dead parts. Subcontractor, next month, not giving a damn for bugs submitted to their part. People from support team, since Tuesday, ignoring your desperate pleading for work around of critical bug. Feel free mix parts of answers to get the right combination.

Possible Reactions

There are five possible choices how to deal with those issues. Each of them can suit specific situations.

1. Do nothing. Wait patiently for the issue to be fixed. If you don’t really care, why spend energy and time to move things faster? Why make all the mess?

2. Take it over. If you can. All those computer boards manufacturing looks easy. With soldiering iron and several chips you should make it. Okay, okay, maybe not so easy, but with software development this scenario is possible and quite often works fine.

3. Blow out. Express all your anger, tiredness and helplessness yelling at the other side. Tell them they should rather make ballpoints instead of developing software (as I was advised recently). Oh, sure you won’t make any friend that way and you hardly get any help, but you should feel happy at least. You told’em! Your ego's condition should skyrocket.

4. Ask for help increasing pressure. Let them know the issue is important and it can affect both your business and theirs. Show them context. Don’t expect they understand. They most likely don’t. Explain them like the grandpa to the cow on the balk. Keep it strictly professional and do it kindly. No need to show emotions.

5. Ask for help somewhere higher. If the above doesn’t work, and it just so happens quite often it does not, repeat but address the communication to someone who is mightier. The Big Boss, manufacturer instead of vendor, Father Founder and/or all saints. Don’t be discouraged because you’ve already heard everything possible was done and you won’t achieve anything more. Funny thing is, the higher someone is the more he cares about the opinion about the company and the more he can do. Both things can be very helpful.

When you have to deal with the really serious issue, go for number 5. Name the Most Important Person you can contact and send polite yet pressing message showing briefly all the background and asking (kindly) for help. Don’t listen to those who tell it won’t help and you could send your message to Mars either way with exactly the same (none) results. Surprising, Martians can be very helpful when asked in proper way. Maybe that’s why “we’re looking at helpful people in business like they were small green extraterrestrials” (quotation taken from Szymon).

And yes, we’ve just received big help from our Martians.