Ask for Advice, Not Permission (2015)

From the article:

> (...) but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.”

I've seen this play out in teams. The part that's omitted is how some unscrupulous team members set up their team members for failure.

I've personally witnessed a case where a team member went out of his way to propose a rewrite of an important feature and reached out to a couple of senior members to do a system design review and provide feedback. They initially told him the design was good as is and required no feedback and change, but once the project was about to be deployed they suddenly became very opinionated and critical of each and every tiny detail, including on the need to rewrite the component.

There are plenty of good reasons why some FANGs enshrine the need to be thorough and extremely critical of projects at the design stage but everyone is obligated to commit to the project once it starts to be implemented. Teams need to commit to projects after they are prompted to give their opinion during the design process, and once their opinions are heard there should be no room for weaseling out and go the backstabbing route to throw everyone around under the bus. There is a time and place to provide feedback, and if you're prompted to deliver your feedback then you should not pretend the project does not reflect your input.

…and when someone asks for your permission (probably because you’re in the person’s management chain), one response could be: “you don’t need my permission, if you think it is a good idea after getting input, go for it. If it turns out to be a bad idea, share your learnings so we don’t repeat the same mistake.”

One thing I’ve noticed is that people hate giving critical feedback to adults. Often people asking for advice just want affirmation.

If asking for advice to truly help with a decision, it’s often useful to clarify that you want their full opinion, not just the PR-approved version of their thoughts.

The average person hates giving critical feedback to another adult.

I always ask my academic supervisor for an advice if I want his permission for something. I present my plan that involve what I want to do and then ask if they think this plan is good and if there is alternative. Usually it is yes go for it. And sometimes it is stupid enough that I get better suggestion anyway.

My last direct request of getting root access on our cluster did not go well. And this was for a good reason.

There is an important exception to this which is where Facebook/Meta sometimes gets into trouble: if what you are planning to do will negatively impact (temporarily or for whatever reason) another person, you definitely need to ask for permission. Only if you are not forcing a person to do something are you alright asking for advice. Coercion with good intentions is the root of all evil.

Great book recommendation that covers this topic and many more like it: Turn the Ship Around, by David Marquet. Highly influential for me when I started managing (and remains highly influential!)

https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/

My advice would have been not to write this blog post. If the author had asked for my permission I would have said "please, no."

I don't see anything wrong with checking with people to see if they have an objection. It is in NO way disrespectful, and strikes me as bizarre to suggest otherwise.

Posts like this seem to be written from a philosophy of anxiety about ever saying or doing the wrong thing, and then proceed to problematize ordinary behavior, which only creates MORE opportunity to say the wrong thing. How about this: don't worry about it! Ask advice, ask permission, whatever. It'll be okay.

That’s actually fairly good advice. I have always disliked the arrogance of “Ask forgiveness, not permission,” and was expecting something along those lines, but the OP was really talking about the psychology of the communication, and they have a good point.

But it really is up to the management culture, and the mindset of the manager, themselves.

One of my basic management postures, used to be easy permission. I wanted my staff to take chances, and my permission deliberately took the risk onto my own shoulders, giving them cover.

But my staff was composed of sober, highly-experienced engineers. I don’t think it would work for a team of youngsters.

When I see big blanket statements of advice, I usually try to "unit test" them to see if they have any value. So I think of wildly different scenarios, and imagine whether this advice is useful, neutral/depends, or negative.

This is one that I can see not going well in a number of those scenarios.

Usually, when I have a good idea, I will ask advise from my manager several times unitll she can't not provide more advise to me and give me with permission that I can start do that, I won't start that without permission. I'm too junior to take all responsibility of whole project or bear the risk of failure

Very opinionated but some times some things are owned for accountability and it’s good professional practice to ask for permission in those cases.

Is there a list of these sort of behavioural anti patterns so to speak?

> The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision. You aren’t inviting them to participate in its success — permission is hardly seen as a value adding behavior — but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.”

I can see where that's coming from but that statement conflates many problems into one and sounds like the author has the opposite problem of just wanting mostly credit and not accountability?

- Many people who ask for permissions are genuinely asking for permissions to be given the chance to _try_ something that they believe may be the correct solution. You'd only be in the position to say now if you have the authority to do so: if you say yes, then you'd better be comfortable with being accountable for saying yes because... they trust your opinion enough to ask you in the first place? If you say no, chances are they will respect your opinion and suddenly it's no longer about permission because chances are, in a professional setting, they just won't do it because they trust your experience.

- If you work with people who only blame you for failures and don't acknowledge you for success, then it's a different problem? Anecdotal: the last job I had people rarely say "I asked [someone] and they said it was fine” — even if it's said exactly like that it's rarely about blaming someone else but more about adding context so that we can all come together to find a better solution (a lot of things get lost in translation especially when people with less experienced but well-meaning are involved). I do feel sorry for anyone who works in an environment where everyone is just trying to offload responsibilities onto someone else.

- If you're in a position to give permissions, then shouldn't you do that _and_ take some responsibilities for it even when the person asking don't expect you to do so? I don't think it's right for people asking for permissions use that as a means to offload responsibilities, but I also don't think it's right for people who are in the position to authorise someone asking for permission to do something to not hold themselves accountable?

- Following from the above, if someone is asking you for advice, then chances are you are not one to give them permission to do something but they respect your opinions, or they want to draw that boundary extra clear (again, just because someone is asking for permission doesn't mean they want to hold you accountable): shouldn't any reasonable person giving advice still hold themselves accountable for the advice they give?

- There is nothing stopping people who ask for advice from you offloading just as much responsibilities onto you than if they were to ask for permission. People who want to offload responsibilities will always find a way to do that — and it doesn't matter whether they asked for permission or advice.

- If it's not something that someone can just go ahead and do, even if they ask you for advice instead of permission, they still have to ask for permission elsewhere?

It's great if you are in a position of power where people come to you for both advice and permissions. If you're someone's manager then you'd better be prepared to give permissions and hold yourself accountable; otherwise, you'd still better be prepared to hold yourself accountable to the advice you give.

See this works great until it goes anywhere a potential legal issue.

For example, in the US if you can't afford a defense lawyer you get one provided to you. They are swamped and rushed but at least you get a defense in a criminal case.

Now say I want to start a hobby or have a legal question, but can't afford a laywer. Example would be questions about how can I do X or Y as a hobby legally and how do I have fun without breaking the law. If you can't afford a laywer you don't really have any options. Chemistry, and hobby rocketry or similar hobbies you might want to get into but the law is so complex and if your broke you basically have to give up and hope in the future you can be rich enough to afford lawyer consulting fees.

TLDR: if it isn't a criminal case and you can't afford a lawyer then your basically screwed and better off avoiding whatever it was you wanted to know or get into doing.

"Should I make this stapler mine and take it home?"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."