Blog: H is for Help

Regardless of your position within the company, you should always be comfortable asking for help. Help can come in many forms, but the key is knowing when, where or whom to turn to for that help.

From my early days of joining our family’s business, through taking ownership of it, and eventually selling it, my requests for help backed every successful plan. Even those few times when I thought I had all of the necessary answers, I would still seek help. In doing so, I rarely received affirmation that what I was proposing was in its best form. Almost without exception, the plan or program I proposed was improved thanks to the ideas learned by asking our own team for their thoughts or going outside to trusted marketers.

Forty years ago an industry trainer named Bob Hedden thought of bringing together a group of owners or senior managers from Maine to North Carolina. The key factor was that none of those companies could be a competitor of any others. We would spend a day and a half sharing experiences and ideas on the largest current challenge in our businesses and present untested ideas for improving our companies. It was there that I truly learned the value of asking for help.  Recognizing the benefits of those discussions, I integrated them into our company’s regular activities. Our different departments became partners in helping each other find solutions so our company could be better across all departments.

Following the events of 9/11 and the formation of the Homeland Security Council, I was asked to represent the retail propane and heating oil industries on the DHS Oil and Natural Gas (ONG) Sub-Committee. It was then, on that scale, that I came to fully appreciate the importance of asking for help. Without the full cooperation of the drillers, refiners, pipeline operators, and others working together, things might be very different today!

So don’t wait until you need help to ask for it; you will learn that the outcome will be quite different!