I'm not a native English speaker, but have been reading and sometimes speaking English for decades. For me 'the ask' feels strange. It sounds like it's just a verb made into a noun, like saying 'the sing' or 'the eat'. "I had an eat" "Three asks".
What would make someone want to write 'the ask' and not 'request' or even just 'question'? How is it different?
Its different because corporate workers will bend over backwards to do anything except speak normally in a corporate context. Because, for whatever reason, thats what corporate culture has developed into.
I first encountered it in the 1981 James Clavell novel Noble House. The character using it was a well-educated Hong Kong gangster, or something similar to that.
(The plot of the book revolves around massive favors that a certain character is obligated to fulfill. At one point it is argued that "the ask" for one of them, while greatly annoying, could instead have been worse yet.)
> I first encountered it in the 1981 James Clavell novel Noble House
i'm always very impressed by people like you. i can't even fully recall the plot of the last book i've read, yet you can remember a single expression in a book you read whenever...
It's a common way to phrase a request in the corporate world. It's a bit more of a concrete and explicit than a simple request, something that can be written down in bullet points in a meeting notes summary or an email.
I hate it too (and others like "learnings" when "lessons" would suffice), but I see the purpose it serves. Asking a team "What's the ask?" is a way of explicitly asking what the concrete requests are which can be documented and followed up on (i.e. "circle back"), whereas just asking for "requests" is more like asking for preferences, which may not be binding, or a vague direction to go for planning.
Despite being proper english, it has not been part of common language in the past centuries - except for corporate culture, where it probably took of around the 90s. For most people it sounds just as alien as circle back, synergies and not having the bandwidth for X.
There’s a common phrase in English: “what’s the ask?” As in, “what is the other party requesting?” “What does this person want?”
I can see how that would sound/read a bit strange to one coming from another culture. It’s just another way of stating the concept of the purpose behind the reason for a person’s request, actions, statement, or in this case, why they requested a meeting.
Getting to “the ask” here meant, for the author, “what the hell does this fool REALLY want out of me?”
I prefer Walt’s approach. When I was 19, I worked for a small business up in Colorado. They had this contractor named Walt that did all their email, website, all that stuff (very early 2000s). Every time he answered the phone, it wasn’t a polite “Hello?”, no! Walt got straight to the point with one loud, gruff word that immediately set the tone for all his conversations:
I'm not a native English speaker, but have been reading and sometimes speaking English for decades. For me 'the ask' feels strange. It sounds like it's just a verb made into a noun, like saying 'the sing' or 'the eat'. "I had an eat" "Three asks".
What would make someone want to write 'the ask' and not 'request' or even just 'question'? How is it different?