“That was a tough one,” Cooper breathed a sigh of relief.
“How so?” I asked.
“The team was struggling with this nasty defect in a critical area of production,” he started. “It took them a while just to collect the data on what was going on, where the failure point was. Then, what to do? That’s when they pulled me in.”
“And?”
“And, I figured it out. Some of their data was defective, which threw them off the trail. Then, I had the insight that solved the dilemma.”
“So, what did you just train them to do?” I was curious.
“I showed them how to solve the problem,” Cooper said.
“No, you showed them that whenever they have a hard problem, they should collect some data, even defective data and then bring the problem to you. That somehow, you will have a brilliant insight that saves the day, and they are off the hook. Not only have you crippled the team from solving their own problems, you have taught them to practice bringing problems to you.”