I had struggled with two assignments in the last weeks and I was thinking why this happened to me. It’s not that the assignments were tough or required out of the box solutions. The first assignment required a design solution and the second one required a technology one.
What happened was for both of these assignments, the managers had “suggested” me what had to be done with the assignment. That was the trap and I made the mistake of not looking outside their suggested solutions. That totally boxed me in. For the first design solution, I did a few revisions and finally went with what I would have done in the first place if there was no “suggestion” from the manager.
For the technology assignment, I tried the method the manager had suggested and it didn’t work and I was stuck. I didn’t think it out of the box and finally i wasn’t able to deliver it. So in the end someone else did it and it turned out to be so simple and I had been doing the same thing for years but it didn’t strike me. At all!.
I can’t blame my managers for this, they were just trying to help. Well since the lessons are learnt the hard way, I think it’s better not to take solutions when it’s handed in a platter, rather think how you will problem solve it yourself and if that is not really working; then may be go with the “suggested” solution. I need to keep this in mind when I am assigning things to people also.