5 Steps To Troubleshoot A Thorny Problem At Work (And Get The Answer You Need)

Part of Avery Blank's series of Forbes articles.

At work, you come across issues all the time in your role, and each issue is usually unique. Sometimes, you don’t know where to start. What is critical to tackling a thorny issue is that your approach is logical and consistent. Here are five steps that will help you troubleshoot gray areas at work:

1.     Apply the existing framework.

Consider the policies or review processes that already exist. The framework could be a company credo, an internal workstream or decision tree. Look at the issue at hand through the underlying principles that drive your work. 

Is the company and your work driven by trust and safety, inspiration or joy? What matters most to your organization? What are the risks your company is trying to mitigate or the reputation your company is trying to project?

Your organization has (or should have) a framework that you can use to help as guiding principles to make decisions that support those principles and solve the issue at hand. If your company lacks a framework, take this opportunity to lead and create a framework.

2.     Analyze how much the particular instance deviates from the framework.

Use your critical thinking and analytical skills to compare the issue at hand with the existing framework of standards. Does it violate the standards? If so, does it violate the standards completely or partially? Understand how wide the gaps are between your expectations and the current incident.

3.     Make an initial determination.

Based on your analysis, collect your thoughts. Review your notes. How should you or your company respond? Would the response be proportional to the incident or offense? Is the determination fair? Does the response address the harm?

4.     Inquire with your colleagues to learn what they think.

Once you have an idea of what you think the solution should be to the problem, now is the time to bring in other minds. Your colleagues may see something you missed or see the problem differently. 

When making determinations that can impact your company externally and its reputation, you need to get it right. Including more perspectives ensures that you are more likely to reach the appropriate response. Engage cross-functional colleagues and stakeholders.

5.     Ask yourself if you can operationalize, replicate and defend your answer.

When you believe you have come to a final decision on the issue, run the idea through a test. Ask yourself, “Can I operationalize this?” “Can I replicate this?” “Can I defend this?” (If it is a big solution, you may want to pilot the solution first before rolling it out.)

A decision can look good on paper, but it is no good if you cannot implement it. That is, a policy is not worth anything if you don’t know or can’t take the steps to enforce the policy. For every decision or policy, identify the concrete steps that you can take to make the policy come to life.

If you can operationalize the policy but can only do it once, this could be a problem. Policies are meant to be frameworks that apply to various scenarios. If you cannot replicate the decision across different instances, the policy is ineffective. The ability to scale or even automate your policy is particularly important for large companies.

Finally, determine whether you and your colleagues can defend the decision or policy. Your decision or policy should be able to continue to protect users, shareholders and society as a whole. Your decision must help maintain your company’s reputation. Your job is to ensure your company has a future.

Not every issue is the same, so you have to have a process to evaluate issues as they arise. Evaluate how the instance before you aligns with the existing framework to get a sense of how the issue should be resolved. Then, reach out to your colleagues to get their perspective. Once you have arrived at a final determination, determine whether your answer is practical.

How do you navigate thorny issues at work? Share with me your stories and thoughts in the comments section below.