I love how tech people have a tendency to jump to a solution.

I love how tech people have a tendency to jump to a solution before …

It's easy to do.
Being a problem solver.
I have this as a constant battle.

The alternative is pretty neat.
Ask incisive questions.
Uncover clues.

Rushing into problem solving, we miss something important. We undervalue the importance and impact of solving it on the other person. And because of this we lose the opportunity to build influential relationships.

An example of this.

I was meeting with a big-wig for the first time. They were the main decision maker at a massive client. They didn't know me from Adam.

The client wanted a file transfer from a computer centre at one side of the manufacturing site to an office at the other. The site tech team had come up with a solution. An automatic, highly secure, failsafe system ... priced at around £60K.

That's what we were meeting to negotiate.

The client wanted a discount from the team. The thing was, I couldn't quite get my head around the project. So I asked questions nobody else had.




It was.




It wasn't.




Monthly.




About 18 months.




Not really.




Yes.




The client loved the suggestion. The team were a little peeved.

Anyway, the moral of this story is to ask more questions before jumping to a solution ... right?

Well yes, and no.

There's another piece which was even more important.

Building relationship capital - trust and goodwill - with a stakeholder who mattered. Someone who would be spending £MM over the next few years with my company that made that £60K look like small change.

All I had to do now was educate and placate the team. Then find some better problems for them to apply their brainpower to solving.