[jmartrican]

This has happened to me. The CEO of a startup I was working for asked me for something. I recall that he did not provide many words to the ask. Maybe one or two sentences. This lead to a 14 page report I put together. I spent several hours doing it, and did most of it on my own time. I sent the CEO the report. Never heard back from him after that. Nothing came of it.

I created a new rule for myself after this. The cost of the ask, should be proportionate to the cost of delivering that ask. Now if I get an ask that is very costly, I will wait and delay and request escalations and such. The person asking should show that it is worth the cost by doing their due diligence and getting approval from people higher up the food chain. If the ask is a bunch of BS, then I will never hear about it again. If it is worthy, I will do it and also I get the added bonus of the effort not being done in secret without the appropriate visibility.

[anitil]

I have two rules to increase the cost on the requester -

1. Never do anything on the first ask. If it's important, they will ask again and I'll think about it.

2. If I have to stay late, you have to stay late. You don't want to stay late? Guess it wasn't important then.