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July 26, 2004
Teaching trouble-shooting
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a co-worker about how some people are good at trouble-shooting problems and other people aren't, and why that is the case.
I started thinking about how someone becomes a good trouble-shooter. Is it an innate skill, a personality trait, something genetic? Can you teach someone to be a good trouble-shooter?
Throughout my career, I've often been told I'm a very good trouble-shooter. It's rare when I can't find the cause of the problem, either on my own or as part of a trouble-shooting team. Part of it is the challenge to unravel the mystery, and I'll sometimes find myself stupidly pursuing the answer long after I should have given up. This part may be personality.
But a big part of my abilities comes from learning, somehow, the skills of trouble-shooting. Is it possible to teach those to other people; can a poor trouble-shooter be taught to be a good one?
Gotta do some more thinking and research on this.
Posted by pete at 12:22 PM
July 25, 2004
Am I right-brained or left-brained
Since I'm a technical person, I've always assumed that I'm left-brained. Until I started working at UEN, and Jim always talked about how right-brained he is.
I decided last week to take a test to see if I'm as left-brained as I think I am. A quick Google search shows a number of tests. I tried three (unfortunately). The two of the three said I'm slightly more right-brained. One of the three said I'm slightly more left-brained. I guess I'm kind of balanced.
Generally I hate these kinds of tests. "When you walk into a theater, classroom, or auditorium which side do you prefer?" Depends on whether I think most people prefer one side (and I pick the other side), which door I walk into, etc. Unfortunately "depends" is not an answer, and it's not a sliding scale (I could probably say I prefer one side 3 out of 5 times). It seems very unscientific. Left-brain speaking.
Two of the tests I tried were the Hemispheric Dominance Inventory Test, which I didn't really like much, and one from SimilarMinds.com that I liked better. I passed over any that required me to print them out and score them manually (hey, if you're going to provide me with a free test on the Web, go to the trouble to make it a form so I can be lazy).
As I took the tests, I kept finding myself wondering how much I over-compensate for my perceived left-brainness. Maybe I am strongly left-brained, but experience has made me look for a more balanced perspective. Maybe I've always been more balanced than I thought.
The question I really wanted wasn't on any of the tests I found: do I enjoy thinking while driving. There is nothing like a long stretch of road with no cell service and just you, the road, and the two sides of your brain.
Posted by pete at 12:40 PM
July 23, 2004
Mentoring the medical way
I've spent quite a bit of time hanging around doctors and medical students this week (at a medical school hospital), due to one of my kids being sick. It's not something I'd ever spend time doing by choice, but as long as I had to be there, I tried to make the best of it.
As I've interacted with the "treating" doctor, who typically has been a resident, and the "attending" doctor, I've notice something about their relationship that I don't see very often between senior and junior people in the I.T. industry.
When an I.T. person is confronted with a problem they can't resolve, often their only recourse is to "escalate" it to a more senior I.T. person, who will take over and resolve it, usually without any further involvement from the junior person. If the junior person is motivated and aggressive and the senior person is agreeable to his staying involved, he can learn a lot from seeing the problem resolved. But all to often the issue just gets escalated and all the junior person learns is how to better identify things he can't do that need to be escalated.
The illness my son had was apparently not very easy to identify. In the I.T. industry it would be a problem to escalate to a more senior person. But the treating doctor always sees the patient, does a medical examination, and consults with the patient. Only after this does he talk with his attending doctor, review what he found and his conclusions, and get advice and input from a more senior doctor. The senior doctor also sees the patient, conducts his own examination (though usually less-thorough if the treating doctor did his job), and consults with the patient.
This system still gives the patient the best treatment, because the senior doctor has the final review of all decisions. But it allows the junior doctor to learn from real-world hands-on experience. Rather than the senior doctor taking over when a situation is beyond the skills of the junior, the senior doctor consults with the junior doctor to help him learn the skills to better handle that situation in the future, and handle the current situation through to completion.
I'm always amazed at how much doctors have to learn to practice their profession. If this system works well for them to develop good doctors, I think it would help develop senior I.T. professionals who only have to learn a fraction as much as doctors.
Posted by pete at 12:33 AM