Problem solving is your responsibility, not your manager’s
Upon graduation from college, I accepted a job offer at a consulting firm based out of Germany. This would be my very first “real job” after a slew of summer internships working in IT help-desk and in the weeks leading up to my departure, and I expected to get hours of lectures from my parents about the road ahead. But the lectures never came; instead, my father left me with just one key piece of wisdom:
“Managers have hundreds of problems of their own — they didn't hire you to add more to their plate. ”
Consider the situation from your manager’s perspective. A significant portion of your manager’s time is devoted towards resolving problems, either those given to them by their superiors, those that arise from their own job responsibilities, or those coming from the team that they manage.
Managing these problems and driving resolution with the team is time-consuming and stressful. In fact, juggling many problems at once forces context-switching, which can diminish your manager’s overall effectiveness. Thus you can understand why you may not be greeted with open arms when you bring your manager more problems.
Be Resourceful
We’ve all seen the “resourceful” descriptor in job listings before, but what does that actually mean? Resourcefulness is the ability to face unfamiliar or difficult situations and come up with solutions by researching, recruiting peers and colleagues, and drawing on their past experience.
Managers place high value on employees that embody this trait — and for good reason. There are two kinds of people in an organization: those that point out problems, and those that come up with solutions. People that get in the habit of constantly pointing out problems without bringing potential solutions risk being perceived as compulsive complainers, and as a result lose credibility in the eyes of their colleagues.
But sometimes being resourceful is not enough, and you will find that you will need to involve your manager to provide direction or take the topic further. How do we go about doing this in the right way?
Have an Approach
Let’s say you've exhausted all of your other options and you must bring the issue to your manager. Before you step into your manager’s office, take a moment and think about how you’re going to present the problem. The key to success here is to make it easy for your manager to make an informed decision.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say that your team has uncovered a design flaw in your product. One approach for escalating this to your manager would be to simply step into their office and tell them that you have a problem and a feature needs to be reworked. But is this really the best approach? By bringing this problem to your manager in this fashion, you've shifted the burden of finding a solution to them.
Ideally, you would come to your manager prepared. Perhaps you would say something like this:
We have found a design flaw in our app. The issue is seen on the overview page of the app, and it prevents all of our customers from doing X. We have two options. Either we re-package this functionality and move it into the details page, or we direct the customer to a new screen after they click on the login button. I recommend that we implement the new screen because of reasons A, B and C.
Now tell me, which would you rather hear? Notice how easy it is for the manager to make a call and choose the path forward. Managers love employees that consistently take this approach.
Cover the Essentials
If we examine the previous example, we can break it down into the following key components:
- Clearly and succinctly describe the problem
- Describe the impact of the problem (does this affect ALL users? Only premium customers? etc.)
- Outline a few potential solutions to the problem
- Make a recommendation along with your rationale
By providing these four elements, you make it very easy for your boss to do their job, and you will be well on your way towards building a strong trust relationship.
Did I miss something? Got feedback? Feel free to reach out or leave a comment.
Tushar is an early career professional writing about insights from his experience with program and product management within the automotive connected car space. You can email him directly at tgarg.sfo@gmail.com
