Solutions and Problem
I once heard that if you were to bring a problem to your boss/superiors, you better have some solutions ready to propose. At least three solutions.
It irked me at that time because to me, it was the manager’s or boss’ responsibilities to find a solution, not to ‘delegate’ the works to their employee. The employee has already done his/her job and happen to trot into a problem, and it seems unfair to suddenly lump another task of finding a solution to the problem. Or isn’t it?
Over the years however my view has slowly changed and I DO try to find solutions or at least troubleshoot problems before bringing them to my superiors. If anything else, it’s easier because for one, the problem sometimes is a simple one and wayyy faster to solve it compared to explaining it to my superiors. Secondly it avoids the problem being put into the backburner and forgotten, which will bite me back in the future because if I’ve found the problem once, it’s also very likely that I’ll find it again, or at least affect my other tasks.
These ‘selfish’ reasons are good enough to me, that I have accepted the saying that I should bring solutions or suggestions to any problem I highlight. However I was put on the other side recently when one of the contractors employed to assist with the project I was working on, highlighted the problems with the project. These problems are well known pain points, and is so since they are hard to resolve. To be fair, I raise the same points when I joined, and I am fairly sure everyone has mentioned about it in one way or the other.
The difference was the contractor kept grumbling and dawdling on the same pain points. When asked what would a solution be, he can’t manage to give a reasonable suggestion. It seems like he was too fixated on the problems and didn’t manage to think of the next course of action. At that moment, I felt like preaching the same exact points I am writing this.
Fortunately I didn’t, hence you having the opportunity to read my whole rant on it 🤣. On a bit more serious note though, yes I agree that highlighting a problem requires possible solutions accompanying it, otherwise it is just a complain.
Be a solver, not a complainer.
Thank you for reading.