Great points. When I wrote this post, I was writing from the perspective of communication between an employee and his/her boss regarding problems that exist within the department.

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Gopal

Coming up with solutions, well that’s not so easy. I fully agree with you that your real value to the company ultimately lies in your ability to fix problems (really to prevent them before they show up).

Case in point: although product testers are very good at what they do, they don’t normally fix problems – they just find them. All too often, when budgets get tight the testers are among the first to be let go.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
The Accidental PM Blog
“Home Of The Billion Dollar Product Manager”

You could probably make your argument for same-department interactions, but for cross-department interactions, this argument doesn’t get too far – and such a practice will often be met with frustration and eventual discouragement by those always trying to solve the problems of others as they often end up doing extra work and possibly something that’s not in their job description.

In my experience, often those who try to solve the problems of others will eventually give up. That is, they’ve tried postulating suggestions and stating the obvious process degradation, yet the results have been fruitless – and they’re not looking to expand their job description . The problem refuses to be thoughtfully addressed by the causer for who knows what reasons – pride…mediocrity…forgetfulness at best. Whatever the cause maybe, eventually the only solution to the problem is to remove the problem causer which is not something a co-worker will understandably out-right say or even suggest…the only intermediate solution is to just keep tallying the problems as they come up.

Obviously my comment does not address the ignorant problem causer whom we all feel for. We all know that there are cases where someone “just doesn’t know” how things should be done and they should be figuratively (or even literally) taken by the hand and shown the way. But this will eventually come to an end – and then often when problems are simply stated to a superior it’s just to keep a running count on something that has become the status quo for the time being – until someone who can make a serious decision decides they’re tired of what the status-quo has become.