This advice applies best in business settings. Business is transactional and it's very rare that someone wants to "get to know you". Those who do, will let you know by getting more involved or talking to you outside of these types of requests, not just out of the blue.
I'm a huge fan of no hello & "just ask" in our future world of async work.
The opposite applies in interpersonal relationships. There you should ask to ask every time:
“Hey John can I ask you about your ex Gina? If now is not a good time, let me know when.”
John might not want to talk about Gina. Or he might not want to talk about an emotional issue before a big meeting at work. Or he might want to know what exactly you want to know and establish parameters of the conversation before diving into it.
> I'm a huge fan of no hello & "just ask" in our future world of async work.
That is just a conflict between people who prefer async and who prefer sync communication. For sync communication, "hello" and "bye" are just markers for begin and end of a session, with implicit expectation that people focus on the session in between.
I'm a huge fan of no hello & "just ask" in our future world of async work.
https://sbmueller.github.io/nohello/