Submission + - Life Skills: Get someone to help you when they've no reason to
The process works fine when your contact in the other department is motivated to help you get the work done. But what happens when he isn’t? This happens entirely too often — particularly for developers and IT folks who need input or sign-off of some kind.
In a perfect world, you already built alliances (if not friendships) with people in other departments, so that your colleagues want to help you. But that isn't always the case. What can you do to get someone to help you with a project task even if it's a distraction from his own work? Here's several pragmatic suggestions, including a few that don't include "promise chocolate."