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I strongly relate to your comment! I was recently brought into a project where my company was working with a vendor to use their platform to reduce tedious work
by alach11 6y ago
I strongly relate to your comment! I was recently brought into a project where my company was working with a vendor to use their platform to reduce tedious work. Only by repeatedly emailing the vendor specific questions was I able to discover that the internal team had made some significant incorrect assumptions about what the vendor's product does.
To prevent dozens of wasted work hours, we can't be afraid to ask specific questions, even if they might make us look dumb!
- Gustomaximus 6y agoIn marketing world a common way of ensuring good communication is the client will write a brief of what they want, then the agency will reply with a 'response to brief'. Here they basically write the same thing in their words back to you. It helps on several levels to ensure understanding is aligned vs emailing back 'I got it' and off to work.
- rorykoehler 6y agoI've also worked remotely for 15+ years. I constantly ask dumb questions. It's amazing how much comes out of the woodwork doing that. Doesn't seem to have hurt career progression either.
- Veen 6y agoWith some of my clients, I go even further. Where possible, I figure out what the possible answers to my question might be and write them in a concise numbered list (with a “something else” option at the end”). Ideally, the response is a number with a little context. At the very least, it prompts a response that challenges my assumptions, which is useful too. I started doing this because I received so many short and incomprehensible or long and incomprehensible responses that rarely included the information I asked for.