Being in a leadership position, I’ve come to realize that a large part of the job is about troubleshooting. Most people don’t want to ask for help, they’d rather deal with issues themselves. But when they can’t, that’s when the trouble comes your way. Sometimes it’s an easy fix, other times you don’t even know where to start. Sometimes it’s conflict resolution, other times it’s technical, and still other times it’s something you haven’t ever dealt with before.
The trouble with troubleshooting is that it’s almost always a new issue, nuanced, and not easily solved with prior knowledge. What I’ve learned along the way about troubleshooting comes down to two things:
- Ask more questions before seeking answers.
- Seek expertise and help, don’t try to troubleshoot alone.
Simple but very productive advice. It’s hard to solve the problem when you lack information, and you don’t always know what you need to know. Asking for clarification, collecting more data, and truly understanding the problem will save a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth where the problem doesn’t get solved.
Once you have significant information, then it’s easier to know who to ask for help. This is the part of the process that I’ve gotten better at with age. I used to think I had to be the one that did all the troubleshooting, that this was my job. I realize now that when I have enough information, I also often have what I need to recognize who to go to for help… not just someone to pass the problem onto, but someone who has the expertise or resources to fix the issue faster than I can alone.
It seems simple, but so often I’ve found myself knee deep in a troubleshooting scenario where a little more information would have helped speed things up. Or, realizing after the fact that what took me an hour could have taken 5 minutes if I just stopped and thought about who had the knowledge that could have helped me. The real trouble with troubleshooting is all about knowledge… how much do I need to know, and who knows more than me and can help?
