{"id":189,"date":"2018-07-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/tell-me-your-problems"},"modified":"2026-03-18T21:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:53:14","slug":"tell-me-your-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/16\/tell-me-your-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell me your problems &#8211; SQL Hammer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I need your help.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am working on improving my department\u2019s problem solving skills. This is going to manifest in a lot of one-on-one mentoring, team exercises, and formal presentations. The formal presentations I am going to build into sessions to present at conferences, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/sqlsaturday.com\/\">SQL Saturdays<\/a>, in a professional development track. If the topic is big enough, which I think it is, I may also build a full day class on problem solving and conduct a couple of full day freecons.<\/p>\n<h2>The need<\/h2>\n<p>I have a number of documented situations where I failed to solve a problem or had to evolve my problem solving tactics to meet a new type of problem. The challenge is that my experiences are of a very narrow scope, since they all happened to me. When discussing this idea with a friend and colleague of mine, he immediately pointed out two amazing ideas to add into my sessions. When I remarked on how good the ideas were, he said, \u201cthey are both things that you, personally, do so instinctively that I am not surprised you didn\u2019t think to include them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That bring me to\u00a0<em>the ask.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>The ask<\/h2>\n<p>One element I will be including in my training is how to find and challenge your own assumptions. I need you to tell me your stories about problems that you met. This way I won\u2019t be building these sessions with my own blinders on.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tell me about a problem you struggled to solve (technical, non-technical, employee related, or even personal).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Tell me if you failed to meet the original goal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Did you pass the buck to someone else to solve it?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Did you seek help without transferring responsibility?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Did you push through and succeed?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What strategies worked?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What strategies didn\u2019t work?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Where were you stuck and what broke you free to move forward?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Send me your stories through my contact page, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/go\/contact\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thank you in advance for helping me on this endeavor.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I need your help. I am working on improving my department\u2019s problem solving skills. This is going to manifest in a lot of one-on-one mentoring, team exercises, and formal presentations. The formal presentations I am going to build into sessions to present at conferences, such as SQL Saturdays, in a professional development track. If the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":451,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}