This post was inspired by a favorite story of my late business partner. It captures the essence of troubleshooting. 

As a young man, Bill’s nephew was a radio technician in the Air Force. Which was pretty amazing, as he knew very little about electronics. Nevertheless, he was quite successful as a primary troubleshooter.

When an aircraft radio failed, he was sent to the flight line as the first responder. He was able to identify and fix about 90 percent of the problems with the following simple procedures:

• Check the power… Fuses? This was really easy in the days of vacuum tubes — did they light up?
• Check the connections… Were all cables properly connected and seated. Antenna? Microphone? Etc…
• Check the manual… If the first two did not solve the problem, go through the manual to make sure things were properly adjusted. Frequency? Squelch? Etc…

If these three did not fix the problem, he yanked the radio and took it back to the shop.

The net result: the shop technicians loved him as they did not waste their time on trivial problems, and the pilots loved him as he often “fixed” things on the spot. All saw him as a bit of a genius.

There is more to the story. Upon leaving the Air Force, he went to college and became a veterinarian, often using the same approach to diagnose his sick animal clients. Many times simple solutions solved their problems too.

The moral — Try the simple things first. We will follow up with a few more stories as we develop this thread on troubleshooting — a very important skill in consulting. So stick around.

Last November I announced my cutting back on regular posts. Moving forward I’ve decided to alternate between consulting-related posts and non-related “stories, observations, and the occasional rant.”

As a warning, if you don’t like the latter, don’t read the posts. Please don’t reply unless it is positive. I really don’t care to hear political or religious arguments as received in the past – and to which I never replied. Fair enough?

Peace — Uncle Daryl 

Interested in resurrecting the FREE monthly teleconference? If so, please let me know. 

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