What's your ask?

Imagine walking into a deli and saying, I want a sandwich. You might get a blank stare. You might be asked some questions, or you might end up with something you didn't want to eat. How can anyone implement what you want if you have no idea what it is you're asking for? In this lesson, I'm going to share with you the essential elements of an ask, because being able to craft a clear ask is key to getting what you want. First, your ask needs to be specific, not vague. A specific ask is clearly defined and includes precise details of what you're asking for. Details should include what it is, what's involved, and what success looks like. One of my early experiences of this came from asking the Association of National Advertisers to add hearing access to television commercials. I asked the organization to have their members caption their television commercials; clear, specific. Next, give context for your ask. Context tells the person why this issue is so important to you and paints a picture of why the issue should also matter to them. Include context like the benefits of doing the ask and the negative impacts of not doing it. This is your opportunity to share the research you've done about the issue, as well as the personal, local, or even global impact of your ask. If I just complain that I wanted captions on television commercials, the Association of National Advertisers probably would have ignored the request. How could they understand the impact of omitting captions if they didn't know the benefits of closed captions? What reason would they have to invest the time to figure out why the issue is so important? So I needed to give them context and explain that people with hearing loss couldn't hear the commercials and needed captions to access them. The context made my ask relevant. Advertisers weren't just losing audiences with hearing loss, without captions they were also losing people in airports, gyms, really anywhere a TV was on without sound. By any context my ask became solvable. And lastly, it's important that you narrow your ask to something actionable. And actionable ask is something that can actually be accomplished and is ready to be acted upon. Sometimes this means making a smaller ask on the way to a larger ask. In my ask to the city of Los Angeles I didn't start off asking them to fix hearing access across the entire city. Instead, I asked the city to add induction loops to its procurement plans. This was a narrow, actionable request the city could actually accomplish. Over and over again, I find the more specific, contextualized, and actionable I am in my ask, the more likely I am to get traction. So take a moment now to consider your ask. How can you add more specificity? What context do you need to provide? How can you narrow your asks so that's actually actionable? You've got this!