Regardless of what company we have worked with, the same scenario happens. Pick any group of 20 software developers, infrastructure people or any other technical specialty. Out of that 20, there are going to be 1-2 “go-to” people. Three if you’re lucky. These are you best problem solvers. Here is a sampling of what we hear being asked of these “go-to” people:
- “Run the estimate by Jane”
- “Let’s bring Joe in at the end and run the summary by him to see if we missed anything”
- The boss always asking if Jane has seen it before believing it.
- “We have spent all week trying to find the problem, let’s ask Joe.”
- “What did Jane have to say about this? Go ask her first before bringing it to me.”
I have seen many Joes and Janes in my career, but wish it were more. These are the “go-to” individuals. We all know someone like them. They are smart, dedicated, technically competent and valuable to the organization. If they leave, things get missed, problems stick around longer and more issues arise.
The common trait in these people is their problem solving skills. Some people have it embedded in them to know what a root cause is and what a symptom is. There is a difference. Most people are busy trying to solve the symptoms, but never are able to get to the core of an issue.
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Whenever we speak to experienced IT managers, Directors and CIOs and tell them of my experiences about having these “go-to” people, they always nod their heads in agreement. They get it and have experienced the same. When we ask them what they do to try and find more proble
of one or two? How much more work will get done one time? How much less time will be wasted?
m solvers, we have yet to have someone answer me with a specific plan to do so.
How do you find more problems solvers to bring into your organization? What if your team had four or five very good problem solvers instead
When adding to IT teams, there is a focus on technically qualifying people. While this is important, mastery of technical trivia does not necessarily make one a good problem solver. Hiring managers in high functioning organizations need to have a plan to assess and measure the problem solving capabilities of potential hires.
Decide Consulting uses a methodology called Conclusive Hiring. This is our assessment that measures ones problem solving capability. People who do well on this assessment have a 100% success rate on their projects.