Early in my career, I was a desktop support tech. I wore a pager, took dispatches from the help desk, and wandered around corporate cube farms solving computer issues. I had a tech lead over me. He was responsible for handling the escalations from the techs for anything they couldn’t solve. There was some significant variation on when team members would escalate.

Some techs, like me, would work problems hard and thoroughly before escalating. Others really didn’t seem to have the capability or willingness to think beyond their training and documentation. When a team member would prematurely escalate an issue to our team lead, he would get really frustrated and exclaim: “You’re a tech. Figure it out!”

This was many years ago, but I remember it well. The experience and educational requirements were minimal. The pay was low. The benefits were nonexistent. However, the expectations were high. My lead wouldn’t tolerate a “tech” that didn’t live up to the title. My lead expected that we would troubleshoot, hypothesize, research, and experiment, until we solved the problem, or died trying. Sure, we could ask for help, but we couldn’t punt. We owned it from start to completion.

Success requires grit

I just finished reading Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. It reminded me of a lot of the reasons why I’ve been successful in my career. People often cite so many reasons for success such as a privileged education, social connections, genius, talent, or charisma. I agree with Duckworth, and attribute much of my success to grit.

There are few people who are willing to stay with a problem long enough to actually figure it out. We get distracted. We escalate. We get passive. We pass the problem to someone “more qualified.” We get confused, impatient, and bored, and then we give up too easily.

I used to directly hire a lot of technical professionals. I’m not directly involved in the interview process much anymore, but when I did, this was one of my favorite questions to ask: “Tell me a story about a time when you faced a problem that you didn’t know how to solve.” Regardless of the level of the position, I always wanted to hire people who can think through ambiguity under pressure and grit their way to the other side of it.

Not feeling gritty? That’s okay. Don’t worry about whether or not you are born with grit. This is something you can develop. Read this article for more on that topic.

Today, as a technology leader, the technical problems I face are more of a strategic magnitude. I also face more organizational and financial challenges than purely technical ones. The principles are the same. Just like when I was a pager-wielding tech, I stay with the problem. I troubleshoot, hypothesize, research, and experiment. I ask for help and insight. I gather and synthesize opinions. I act, measure, and adjust.

I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be around to see the solution. How about you? Do you have enough grit to see it through? I bet you do. You’re a tech. You’ll figure it out.