By Berend Booms, Associate Editor | Future of Assets

At the start of every week, I sit down to write, and every week the list of possible topics to choose from is quite substantial, although there are noticeable trends. AI keeps creeping further into our maintenance processes, and tends to dominate the headlines for most of the reading I do for work. In general, automation is changing the shape of MRO work in ways we are still learning to measure. This last week, stock management optimization was added to that list, because there is always another inefficiency hiding somewhere in the warehouse. Normally I pick whichever of these has been sparked by something I came across in my reading, or a conversation that stuck with me longer than I expected. I had every intention of doing the same this week, until this morning stopped me in my tracks. 

I was at an appointment for my oldest son, and as we were walking outside so we could drive back home, a poster on the wall caught my attention. It carried a short passage from Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. "What is the bravest thing you've ever said?" asked the boy. "Help," said the horse. 

That short quote hit me hard, something about the simplicity of it landed somewhere deep. I am someone who finds it very difficult to ask for help. I have spent a lot of my life convinced that needing help was the same as admitting defeat, a confirmation that I had failed to live up to expectations I had put on myself. It has taken years of failing, of breaking down and finally asking for help to break out of that belief, and I still sometimes fall victim to the same thought patterns. Standing in that hallway this morning, holding my son’s hand as we were walking out, I processed a sentence meant for someone else's story, for his story. It made me realize how much that idea has shaped both how I parent and how I work. 

Clarity, Courage, and Other Superpowers 

Asking for help is not weakness dressed up as an action. It is one of the bravest, most generative things a person can do. I have been circling around this idea of superpowers for a while now, ever since I got a chance to sit down with Brianna Sylver for a recording of Assets UNSCRIPTED. At one point she told me that clarity was her superpower, the ability to cut through noise and see plainly what actually mattered in a given moment. I love how Brianna has embraced this ability, and it has made me start noticing the quiet abilities people carry that rarely get named as strengths, the things that look unremarkable on the surface but change everything about how someone moves through their work. Standing in that hallway this morning, I once again returned to Brianna’s words of wisdom. If clarity can be a superpower, then so can asking for help. 

There is nothing wrong with asking for help, quite the contrary. This is as true for me as a person as it is for our industry: think about what our line of work actually asks of people. Technicians are expected to diagnose faults on equipment that grows more complex every year, often under time pressure that leaves no room for hesitation. Planners are expected to balance stock levels against unpredictable failure patterns while budgets get tighter and expectations climb. Engineers are expected to understand systems that blend decades-old mechanical logic with brand-new sensor data and AI-driven predictions. In every one of these roles, there will be moments where someone does not know what is going on. The machine behaves in a way nobody predicted. The dashboard shows numbers that do not match what the technician is seeing on the floor. The failure mode looks nothing like the manual. 

In those moments, the instinct to protect your reputation can be overwhelming. Admitting confusion feels dangerous when you know your performance is being watched, when a promotion or a bonus or simply your manager's respect seems to hang on appearing competent at all times. So people tend to do what I’ve done for the longest time: they guess. They feign confidence and push forward without asking the question they should have asked, quietly working around the gap in their understanding rather than closing it. It almost goes without saying that this introduces a level of risk that is hard to foresee, in which that guess becomes a mistake that costs far more, in downtime, in safety, in trust, in shame, and in guilt, than the discomfort of raising a hand would ever have cost. 

What Leadership Owes the People Who Ask for Help 

This is where I think leadership carries real weight. If a culture punishes uncertainty, it will get silence in return, and silence in a maintenance environment is expensive and oftentimes very dangerous. Leaders who want reliable operations need to actively build an environment where asking for help is read as a sign of maturity rather than a red flag. That starts with how mistakes and questions are received in the moment. A technician who says "I do not fully understand this procedure, can someone walk me through it?" should be met with curiosity and support, not a raised eyebrow. A planner who admits their forecast might be off should be thanked for the honesty, not called in to explain themselves. 

Beyond how questions are received, leaders should think about how they actively reward the behavior they want to see. This can be as simple as publicly recognizing someone who flagged an issue early because they were not sure of the right course of action. It can mean building mentoring structures where asking questions is simply part of the normal workflow, not an exception to it. Leaders can measure how transparently people communicate risk and uncertainty, alongside the outcomes they deliver. When people see that asking for help leads to better outcomes and genuine respect, rather than judgment, they start doing it more often, and the whole organization becomes more resilient because of it. 

A Responsibility We All Share 

I feel that this is a shared responsibility that extends beyond direct leadership; colleagues carry it too, and so do friends. Someone struggling on the shop floor, in an office, at the dinner table, or out with friends, often will not say so directly. It usually comes out sideways, in a shorter answer than usual, a missed detail, a slightly flatter tone in a conversation. Noticing that and gently opening a door, asking how someone is really doing, offering to talk it over rather than leaving them to solve it alone, matters much more than correctly following procedures ever will. 

I think back to that poster in the hallway, and to the boy asking the horse about bravery. The answer was so honest, so short, and yet it held an entire philosophy for how we should treat one another, at home and at work. In our industry, where the stakes of a missed signal can be measured in downtime, in cost, and sometimes in safety, the willingness to ask for help might be the single most valuable trait a person can bring to a team. Because it is a really, really difficult thing to do, and because doing so anyway is what allows all of us, together, to keep learning, keep improving, and keep the people and the assets we care for running well. 

So this week, wherever you are in your own work, I would encourage you to notice the moments where you are tempted to push through alone. And I would encourage you, just as much, to notice the people around you who might be doing the same. Sometimes the bravest and most useful thing any of us can do is simply ask for help.