Yesterday I spent all morning trying to upload a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file into a table in one of our client’s databases. Yes I know some of you hardcore techies are now sniggering away behind your Skylander collections, and I guess you are right it should have taken me the time to write this sentence to complete, but it wasn’t happening fast and everything I tried threw an error.
Needless to say, this frustrated behaviour continued for a good 2 hours-until a moment of magic happened.
Ray a designer who sits alongside me and was probably fed up with me swearing at my desktop, quietly suggested that I talk him through what I was doing, as a way of working out where the problem was.
Ray said nothing as I calmly talked through the problem stage by stage. By stage 2 in the process it quickly dawned on me exactly why the file had not uploaded correctly and within 30 seconds the data from the CSV file was loaded in to the database.
By simply calming me down and focusing my attention into describing the process in layman’s terms, the problem was quickly solved. Genius!
So why did I not spot this simple error earlier on in the day? Quite simply it was arrogance, driven by the belief that I and only I could solve the problem.
By bottling stuff up and believing you are the only one who can solve the problem can have you stuck fast in a frustration loop.
Frustration loops exist in various guises in many of our clients businesses and we find they are solved much quicker and with less effort when the challenges are shared amongst us.
Being able to share a clients challenges with them, however trivial can lead to new business opportunities and faster more effective results.
The key as Ray demonstrated to me is to say nothing and listen to everything even if you are no expert.
