Troubleshooting

There are lots of ways to solve problems. Troubleshooting is one of them. Troubleshooting is used to diagnosis the source of a problem.  So to me, troubleshooting is the best way to solve a problem.  My process of troubleshooting is easy to understand. The goal is to always give yourself a limited number of options to choose to determine what’s going on (typically 2).  If the problem is reconfiguring email or why marketing efforts aren’t working, you can do the same thing.  Let’s walk through an example.

You try a new marketing idea and while you feel it should be effective, you aren’t seeing the results.  To troubleshoot it you need to get to the cause.  In the case of a marketing idea, it could be the content, it could be the medium or it could be the audience. From there you can survey people who fit your target on the content and medium, or you can tweak your content, or you can test the same content in other mediums.  As you eliminate each one, you get down to the root cause of the problem.

The other beauty of troubleshooting is it requires action.  You can’t come up with two choices and then sit back and wait. Well, you can, but it is hard. It means you are always moving forward and weather the choices are right or wrong, you are accomplishing something by trying.  There is nothing more frustrating to me than someone who complains about a problem but doesn’t lift a finger to fix it.  If you adopt a troubleshooting attitude, you will always be ready to try. Which is the first step to solving them!