What's the problem?

Yesterday I shared that The Assistant Principal Podcast will be coming out soon. Here is a teaser, the best quote of the episode (IMHO): 
 
“If we have different ideas about what leadership is, doesn’t that mean that we expect different things from our leaders? And, as a leader, how will you know who is expecting what from you?”

Colleagues,

​Pam and I returned from our great vacation across the country on July 23rd. The following week Pam noticed that the internet in her office, located downstairs at the far end of the house, was very sluggish.
 
As she started doing more and more work for the new semester, the situation became intolerable, so we called our internet provider (45-minute wait!) and increased our service level.
 
This did not help. 
 
I played around with the antennae on the router. Nope.
 
Upon awaking Friday morning, I found my wife working on her computer in the dining room because she couldn’t get any service in her office.
 
I decided to get online and do some searching, which I anticipated would be of little help, and then calling our provider and spending another 45-minutes on hold.
 
However, as I walked to my office, I asked myself “what’s the problem?”
 
The problem was not a bad internet signal – that was only the symptom. Pam had been getting good internet in her office before we left for our trip.
 
So what had changed?
 
It finally dawned on me that we had rearranged our living room as soon as we got home (that’s another story). We needed a small planter and grabbed the one that the router was sitting on, so the router wound up on the floor. Hmmmm…
 
I shoved a crate under the router to get it off the floor and BOOM, high speed service was returned to Pam’s office.
 
We’ve been struggling with this for a month, but we never stopped long enough to really dig down to figure out the root problem. Please, be more strategic than I am!
 
Cheers!
 
Frederick