Why do people not ask their teams for help?

[Jelena]

We talked about the user questions before (darn you, unhelpful help desks!), but there is another trend I see frequently - questions from the SAP professionals that really should be directed to their local team mates instead of SCN. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but y'all must have seen this: functional folks asking about custom programs; ABAP developers asking Basis/DBA level questions; cross-module questions, etc. Some of them are legit (many people wear many hats these days) but on most occasions I have to wonder if the person asking supports the whole SAP system all by themselves. (By the way, I actually know one such person, he is brilliant and doesn't ask questions on SCN somehow.)

In the teams I worked in the sequence was usually as follows:

1. Try yourself (with help from Google).

2. Ask the team mates.

3. Post on SCN or contact SAP Support.

To me this seems like a very efficient process as we're able to solve many issues quickly on stage 2. So why is this not happening elsewhere? Do team mates no longer help such people because they consistently bypassed phase 1 above? Do people just have bad teams? Do people lie about their skills when hired and are then afraid it'd come out if they ask a question? What's the story here?

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

do you see a team here:

[SimoneMilesi · Accepted solution]

This reminds me the old PC rooms at university

[former_member186746 · Accepted solution]

Wow!

What an educational picture.

Not a lot of synergy is displayed here.

[former_member182550 · Accepted solution]

And that's why I disliked working in India to a certain extent.

[VeselinaPeykova · Accepted solution]

This picture reminded me of the old PC gaming clubs when I was a student ... except that we had better drinks and food and no plant could survive there .

And yet, this is better than the open space office concept, where you get zero privacy and start to hate everybody around you.

[former_member182378 · Accepted solution]

Juergen, members,

With advancement in technology (communication channels), no longer can team, teamwork, synergy be accessed by sight alone.

With maturity in local markets, the knowledge workers are becoming more and more autonomous.

You can (physically) sit "next to your team mate" but that means very little...by itself, in terms of building value, providing value; having better communication, helping each other.

TW

[ChrisSolomon · Accepted solution]

That's a cop out! You can STILL ask people within your organization for help before going out onto the internetz asking randoms for advice/answers your depend on!

[JL23 · Accepted solution]

exact, the location does not matter, I am in a small group of 5, and we work from 4 different locations in Germany. We rarely work all together as a team, everybody has its own project assignments and works in just 1 or 9  different project teams, we see each other once in a month or once in 2 months only.

You know me for years in SCN, which means you know how close I am to SCN, but you can count my work related questions with the fingers of one hand. And I am certainly not omniscient, I also have questions. SCN is my the first place to search, but the last place to ask.

Even we are distributed, we have phones, email, and chat options to ask each other.

And even cross groups. I am MDM, we have a central ABAP team, nevertheless we know us. Last week I had bigger issue in my Brazil project and the only option was to debug, but I had no idea where to start debugging in case of a grayed menu entry, so it was a chat with one of the ABAPers which got me on the right track within 2 minutes and after 2 hours I  had found the root cause by myself.

Even we have real good ABAPers here in SCN, my first choice is in-house.

And I do not lose my face by asking a colleague, as my question has either a real problem or already a diligent analysis of the problem. And on the other side nobody is perfect from the beginning, even it is known that in Germany nobody is just hired from the street and I don't know anybody who just got the job because of a certificate.  So all are welcome to ask before they do mistakes which costs me more time to clean up.

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

TW Typewriter wrote:

With maturity in local markets, the knowledge workers are becoming more and more autonomous.

Did you not hear the knowledge workers are getting replaced by "digital workers"? (Although I suspect some were not much of "knowledge" workers to begin with.)

+1 to Chris and Juergen. I work from home most of the time. Even if I'm in the office I frequently just email my team mates. Not because I'm such a sociopath but because we are like ships in the ocean and don't cross paths (everyone is always in some meeting). Some folks I work with are in the other states or countries and I've seen them 0-2 times. Yet we don't hesitate to ask each other questions.

[former_member182378 · Accepted solution]

Juergen,

My reply was to the picture you posted. By looking at a picture, you can not "judge" "rate" team and team work.

Same point, to infer "Not a lot of synergy is displayed here." might be incorrect.

My comments around the picture... and not related to asking colleagues first or not. Frankly I don't care, if someone asks SCN first or his/her colleagues first. The behavior one chooses will impact his/her growth and progress in that area.

Hope this clarifies.

TW

[Jelena]

Dear lord, this reads like Psychiatry Today. So many deeply rooted mental problems and constant state of fear...

@Juergen - this looks pretty much like our office except we have lower walls, laptops and a bit more greenery. We used to have rather spacious cubicles but some big shot decided it was a great idea to convert to "open space". So that he could see all his hamsters spinning the wheels on the way from the front door to his private corner office.

[ChrisSolomon]

I remember we had this same discussion of sorts a while back.....all great points above....I remember the prior discussion focused a lot on how in some cultures, asking for help and/or showing lack of knowledge is seen as "weakness".....so THAT is a big part of it too. There is probably a fairly sizable list of reasons, and none of them are a good excuse for any of that behavior.

[Lakshmipathi]

To answer your question

1. Laziness to put some efforts on their own or to discuss with team mates
2. Willing to get spoon feeded
3. Afraid of getting exposed if they share their knowledge
4. To get some appreciation from team members as if they found out the solution after getting inputs from SCN

G. Lakshmipathi

[former_member184701]

Because they afraid to look as not competent among their colleagues;

Rather than to annoy their team, they would simply ask questions here, because it is more private, more fast and more reliable;

Asking questions here, they become to answer other questions later having a chance to get badge/points.

[VeselinaPeykova]

Maybe you are right, but the world is small.

For example if we get a new colleague I google to see what kind of person he/she is and adjust my behavior (e.g what is seen as completely normal in communication between colleagues in my country can be considered as unacceptably rude or too official by people with a different background). So if I happen to stumble upon a stellar resume in Linkedin - certifications, multiple projects etc., but in SCN I see recently posted user-level questions in the area of expertise - guess what I would think (I know it is bad to judge people on past behavior, but this is human nature).

And some post with their real names (it seems) and with a profile picture of themselves - this is what baffles me.

And getting answers from SCN is not always more reliable than getting feedback from your colleagues, who will know more about the current setup and the business processes than SCN forum members.

Usually it is faster to ask a colleague via Lync or directly than posting here and waiting for replies, but it is bi-directional and works for meaningful questions only, not for 'do my job' and 'I am too lazy to think' ones.

[SimoneMilesi]

It's the way i always worked but i think it's related my age and my experience.

Apart from remoteness (i still consult with my former colleguees via skype and they do the same with me when we remember a problem was solved by someone) which can easily overridden, i think the main problem is that the companies do not want to invest in formation.

And for formation, i mean also a way to think and approach problems.

It could sound silly, but i saw it in previous situations and still notice it with some consultants we have: they are obliged to work in the faster way, not the best one, and when they meet something unexpected (a problem, someone like me on the other side which is an hard bone to persuade, a new situation) they just... tilt.

This reminds me what a collegue told me once when we discuss about new vs old programming languages.

Making it short, while old languages forced you to think out of the schemes since they limits, the new ones give you finished solutions/tools that avoid the "think something different" part.

You code faster but you are often not so smart...

[former_member182550]

...wilt  (or maybe ...bend)

I know exactly what you mean. The other thing is that a lot of the new CM's are not Programmers - they have just learnt the semantics of the language they are using and do not or cannot think like us old 'uns.

Rich

[Jelena]

Thanks for the replies!

@Raphael - but the thing is you don't necessarily have to share knowledge to help someone. I've also worked with some people who were very knowledgeable and nice but would not really share. Still, I could ask them a question, they'd look at it and might resolve it (even if without telling me how exactly). But it looks like many people don't even try (or bother?) asking.

@Veselina - yes, remoteness can be a problem. Actually I'm amazed that some organizations chose to isolate the ABAPers from functional team to such degree. While I wouldn't want to do an SD consultant's job, it can be beneficial to get an ABAPer involved early on, at least to make sure the whole design makes sense. Unfortunately, it's not unusual for an ABAPer to receive a specification that is either a complete nonsense or can be replaced with something much easier. And it's even worse when ABAPers in such cases are just happy to oblige instead of suggesting a better option. (We see a lot of this on SCN too.)

[VeselinaPeykova]

Here is another possible case - some companies outsource all development, so to get a developer, you need to prepare a proper specification. By 'a proper specification' I mean to explain in details which exits, what function modules (with what parameters), what tables, selects, prepare mock screens of the transaction etc.

If you don't have good project documentation and if you are not lucky to have a techno-functional colleague to help you out, sometimes this can be a challenging task.

Well, probably I would not ask for help for a custom development gone wrong in the ABAP forum, even after reading the notes, the standard code and the custom code - for the sole reason that people there would expect a level of knowledge, which I don't possess and I will just get an advise to ask a local developer for assistance.

But maybe others don't have such scruples... or are really desperate...or have a thicker skin... no idea.

[raphael_almeida]

Interesting question Jelena!

And I think that this problem only existed here, jeez small world!

Jelena Perfiljeva wrote:

In the teams I worked in the sequence was usually as follows:
1. Try yourself (with help from Google).
2. Ask the team mates.
3. Post on SCN or contact SAP Support.

I also share this thought, but a little different in parts ... In all the teams I worked, what happened was the opposite of the passage I quoted ... All were very good people, but none communicated... Who say share documents / information that could be very useful!

I recently worked in a company / team like that, and as I am a very hectic person and saw this situation began to encourage all little by little (and I ended up getting the nickname "The ABAP for various subjects" (HAHA) )

What I realized these people is that they were afraid to pass knowledge, thinking that others could overcome them and so they lose their jobs, I think this kind of fear (the do not want to be replaced) is what makes this connection harder...