Don't let your problems become my problems...

Okay, so I was remiss in posting for a while. It's rough spending a couple weeks in Hawaii and then returning to two huge snowfalls. But no excuses - I'm here.

"Don't let your problems become my problems" - what does that mean?

It means:

• You need to own your issues
  
• You need to take your issues as far as you can before I get involved
  
• You can and should ask for help, but you will still own the issue
  
• If you can't own the issue and I have to, you may not like how I resolve it
  

A different way to consider it is this: there are different reasons to go up the chain with an issue. The key and common reasons are for awareness, for consultation, and for escalation. In a sense, these should form a pyramid.

Most commonly, you send things up the line to inform. "Hey, here's the status of the project." No action is needed, but it ensures you aren't violating the "No Surprises" rule. Less often than that, there's consultation. "Do you think we should do this in phases or a big-bang?" You still own the issue, and you have a decision to make and you want consultation on it. Finally, there's escalation. "The project team is unable to get consensus from the customers on the third requirement and we need you to contact a few people." The object of this rule is to keep these to a minimum.

Have you done whatever is possible within your scope to avoid escalating? If not, you are probably still in "inform" or "consultation" mode.

When this works right, you own your job, I know what's going on, and we both get to keep focus where it belongs.