There’s a good reason why the website “LMGTFY” (Let me Google that for you) had its well-deserved five minutes of fame. There’s a universe of things that you can not only find yourself, but that are so easy to find yourself, yet people still tend to ask others to do it.
While it’s fun to laugh at ourselves, and others—and I’ve pointed others to that website far too many times—it does imply a serious point.
Let’s examine it by viewing the situation from your boss’s or client’s eyes.
Employee: “Hey, I need to get this piece of information from the project manager for [ClientName]. Who is in charge of that project?”
The boss says: “[Insert Name Here]”
The boss thinks: “We use our internal tracking system comprehensively, why couldn’t he have just looked that up?”
Or how about:
Freelancer: “I’m running late with the logo design. When are you presenting it to the client? I’ll make sure it’s done well before that time.”
The client says: “Next Friday.”
The client thinks: “The exact dates were on the timelines that we both shared via email when the project started and have mentioned in Slack. He doesn’t value my time enough if he’s wasting it asking these sorts of little questions to me.”
These responses—the ones the client or boss thought, at least—show how the situation feels from the other side. By asking questions that you can quickly find yourself, you’re messaging to the other side that you value their time less than you value your own time. But since they are the boss or client hiring you to help, shouldn’t it be the precise opposite of that?
An easy rule of thumb to follow is to define the amount of time needed to answer small questions yourself. If it would take under, say, 1 or, say, 3 minutes—do it yourself. If not, escalate it. And “escalate” is the right word, think about every request to your boss or client as an escalation. Because that’s how it feels on their side.
A way of thinking about this point is that nothing is neutral. Every little thing that is said or done either adds value or removes value. And asking questions you can answer yourself like that pile-up and ultimately remove value from the otherwise great (well, hopefully great) value you’re bringing to the client.
Note also that this applies when it is quick and easy to find the information yourself. There are cases in which you can find the information yourself, but it isn’t quick and easy. I had one client who was obsessed with the company’s knowledge management system and I would literally ask him questions like, “Who are 3 clients who loved us, so I can ping them about leaving us reviews?” to which he would respond, “Just check our knowledge management system, it has a record of our 500 clients for these last 7 years, and by reviewing each project and exploring the project notes you should be able to pinpoint 3 people to reach-out to. Let me know if you have any questions.”
My response to him was “Thanks! I’m not prioritizing this and I’ll let you know when I get to it” but my thought was, “You know the clients and the stories and which ones went well and which ones went badly, and you could literally spend 30 seconds giving me three names off the top of your head. Yet you recommend I dive in to go through the list of 500, and with zero context and zero information about each, and you think I can figure out who was happy and who wasn’t based on the formal docs there? Even if I could, you think that would be doable in under dozens of hours of my time?” and it was very clear to me how much he valued my time as compared to his own. So, from that point onwards, I changed my interaction style with him. But how? Now that is a story for a different day—or just ask me.
