When someone solves a problem for you, it can feel like magic. Letting your roommate fight with the landlord about the leaky faucet? Go for it. Someone else volunteers to wrangle the friend group for a big outing? Yes, please. A colleague offers to manage an upcoming project? Be my guest.

At Pliancy, providing that magical feeling is one of our specialties. There’s a sense of immediate relief that comes from handing the reins to someone you trust. My colleagues and I have spent years honing our technical skills so we can make the heavy lifting look effortless.

So how do we make the magic happen? There’s no universal recipe, but I’m here to tell you about my secret sauce: persistence.

Problem Solving at Pliancy

When faced with a problem, I’ll almost always choose to keep digging. That’s why I’m on Pliancy’s Escalations team. We tackle our clients’ and our company’s advanced technical problems, often developing new solutions or applying known fixes in unorthodox ways.

This approach isn’t uncommon at Pliancy. To various degrees, we all have a similar impulse to keep working on a problem until it’s solved, catapulting us out of the endless break/fix loop many MSPs get stuck in. When we solve an issue, we want to know it’s solved for good.

For us, it’s not just about checking a box and closing a ticket. It’s about finding a comprehensive solution.

Digging Deep for Answers

I recently put this philosophy to the test with what seemed like a straightforward client request. Without getting lost in the details, the client wanted to use a specific method of device trust that worked with their antivirus. It wasn’t a typical integration, but I found the appropriate documentation and got to work.

For Windows devices, the process was uncomplicated. But when I started on the Mac OS solution, I encountered my first hurdle: a typo in the code provided by the vendor. No big deal, typos happen. But even after fixing it, the connector still didn’t work (that was hurdle two).

Hurdle three: making my way through customer support at Addigy, the software tool we use to manage Apple devices, to eventually speak with an Addigy engineer who confirmed the code didn’t work and created a custom solution.

Hurdle four: the custom solution still didn’t work. It had been about a month at this point, but I kept the client updated and wasn’t willing to give up yet. I kept testing, checked all my work, and even started from scratch with a new computer and profile.

After exhausting all my options, I went further upstream and got in touch directly with Okta, the platform we use for identity management. Thanks to my detailed documentation, I had a laundry list of everything I’d already tried. I told Okta support that I would do anything else they needed me to do to make this work.

The response from the Okta engineer was not what I expected: “You did everything right.” Together, the engineer and I reviewed logs and determined that everything was correct on my end and on Addigy’s. Ultimately, Okta realized there was a flaw in their own documentation that had made the platform unusable for a sizeable group of users.

And that was that. After 6 weeks, my mission was complete. The issue was fixed—not only for my client, but for every single MDM vendor outside of Jamf, totaling thousands of customers.

Beyond Imposter Syndrome

When I started working on this request, all I wanted to do was resolve one client’s request and give them that sense of magic. I never expected it would lead to collaborating with Addigy and Okta engineers.

I changed documentation for thousands of users (and it’s not the first time, either). I’m proud of myself for solving the issue, but I also think everyone is capable of doing what I did.

Even as you read that, imposter syndrome may already be creeping in. You may be thinking, ‘Sure, someone could do that, but not me.’ But yes—why not you?

You Don’t Need to Fake It ‘Til You Make It

Imposter syndrome restricts our potential by locking us into an idea of who we think we are. It tricks us into believing we’re limited not only in what we could achieve (what we’re capable of), but what we should achieve (what we deserve, what is “appropriate”).

Often, the advice for conquering imposter syndrome is to fake it until you make it. I understand what they’re saying: imposter syndrome imposes fake limits on our potential, so be fake right back. By that logic, “faking it ‘til you make it” fights fire with fire.

My issue is that this strategy buys into the premise that you are, in fact, an imposter. It concedes that you do not have a right to go beyond the limits that imposter syndrome imposes upon you; that going beyond them makes you some kind of pretender.

Be As You Wish to Seem

I believe we each have as much right to step outside those boundaries as anyone else. It’s like Socrates says: “Be as you wish to seem.” If you want to be a person who solves problems, you have to solve problems. If you want to be a person who can validate documentation, you have to read the documentation and validate it.

If you want to be a person who drills down and contacts Okta, you have to be a person who takes screenshots, gets logs, and makes their way through Okta’s layers of support. There’s nothing fake about it.

Stubbornness vs. Persistence

In reality, not every problem is solvable. Even with the most tenacity and with endless determination, some hurdles can’t be cleared. (In the words of Jean-Luc Picard, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and lose. That is not failure; that is life.”)

So how do you know when to give up?

The key is recognizing the difference between stubbornness and persistence. Stubbornness is refusing to take no for an answer. It’s running into a wall repeatedly without looking for another way around, over, or through.

Persistence, on the other hand, is about intentional, sustained effort. It’s a matter of identifying, and then exhausting, all of your options. With a systematic approach, you can eliminate each possibility until you either arrive at a solution or ultimately realize that a resolution doesn’t exist. If there’s no solution, you can walk away without regrets or what-ifs.

My Problem-Solving Toolbox (and Yours, Too)

Want to try it for yourself? Obviously, depending on the issue you’re up against, you may need certain technical skills or specialized knowledge. But beyond the subject matter expertise, all you need are three things:

Self-belief is where it all begins. When faced with a difficult problem, don’t count yourself out before you’ve even gotten started. If imposter syndrome has a hold over you, remember that doing is the first step to being.

Documentation is key to tackling a problem systematically. Creating a record of your efforts (whether it’s analog or digital) is helpful in multiple ways:

– Tracking potential solutions to consider
– Recording potential solutions you’ve eliminated
– Showing and explaining your work to a third party

Accountability is more nebulous. When faced with my client’s problem, it would have been easy to pass the buck and say, “Ah, it’s a little too hard. This is a non-standard setup, and I don’t want to pursue it anymore.” But choosing to push through that impulse will immediately strengthen your resolve. (Not convinced you can do it? Refer to tool #1 above.) Know that holding yourself accountable is a skill issue. It’s a muscle that can be developed over time, as long as you continue to exercise it.

I Believe in Magic

You might think that approaching every problem this way would be exhausting—and if I was only jumping through these hoops strictly in service of clients, it might be. Thankfully, it’s not that one-sided.

When I’m solving a problem, I’m determined to get to the bottom of it as much for myself as for others. That problem doesn’t always have to be professional. I’ve applied this philosophy to game design (I started from zero, and now host game jams to challenge and inspire others) and music (I convinced myself I couldn’t write or make music, and I released 3 albums this year).

No matter the topic, my successes bring me joy, help me spread joy, and inspire others to spread joy, too. That’s the magic; one of life’s rare win-win-wins. It’s a transformative ripple effect that anyone can start, if only you put yourself out there.

Life is short. We only have so much time to be who we want to be. And if you want to be someone who makes magic happen, there’s no better time to start than today.