More thoughts on troubleshooting!

I cannot tell you how annoying it is to troubleshoot a problem, only to have someone else intervene and demonstrate not only didn’t they read what you had done, but giving advice and guidance that is technically incorrect at best, horribly wrong in reality. One of the things that I often tell CIO’s is that every single IT person in their shop should have to spend a year on a helpdesk or a year as a second-grade teacher. Why? It teaches them the concept of stepping in, stepping up and owning the problem. When you intervene, you own the problem going forward. When you ultimately say things that are wrong, you can cause significant pain.

The concept of owning a problem is why I always tell people if you answer, be prepared for ownership. That means you, as the person answering the original question has to be prepared for the other person being frustrated if you didn’t take the time to read the original problem post and all follow-on posts on the topic. Don’t waste my time at that point! After more than 30 years in some different IT roles, it shouldn’t frustrate me when that happens, but it does, ☹.

Rule of thumb read the entire post, make sure you fully understand the question. Don’t make the person with the issue feel like they are wrong. Be supportive and instead of declaring (it isn’t this) offer suggestions, ideas and other things the person can try. That is why I tell CIO’s to put people that struggle with customer service on the helpdesk. You have to be able to handle the issues and concerns the other person has. That is also when I never talk to tier 1 people on helpdesks. Nothing against tier 1, but I have been doing IT troubleshooting for a long time. I promise, if I call the helpdesk or ask for help, it is not a normal or easy problem. I am always open to trying something new. Make sure it is something new. Someone responded to my help request for the picture posting issue here on Viriy with the following: “I was able to post a poll with some pictures. It isn’t Virily.” (I paraphrased the response). The original issue I posted and described was only in the story and gallery posts. Seriously, I haven’t made any changes to my system for the past three days while troubleshooting the problem. Pictures I couldn’t previously post directly on Virily work now. The only changes were to the platform, not my machine.