Before You Fix It, Go See It

Early in my career, I naively volunteered for everything.

Projects. New initiatives. Problems nobody wanted to tackle. You name it, I volunteered for it.

Eventually, I became what I jokingly called “voluntold.”

The problem was that I didn't always have a clue how to approach what I had volunteered for.

I crashed and burned a few times. I slowly became more effective and learned something along the way.

I needed to get closer to the problem. Much closer.

I started spending more time with the people doing the work. Watching the process. Asking questions. Trying to understand what was really happening before jumping in with a solution.

A few simple questions helped:

Where does this get difficult?

What's getting in your way?

What would you change?

The answers were usually pretty revealing. Sometimes the problem was different than I originally thought. Sometimes the fix was simpler than I thought.

Sometimes we were trying to solve a problem that didn't really exist.

I still use that lesson today.

Before you try to fix something, go see it.

Get close to the work. You'll learn a lot. I sure did.