I was chatting on the phone with my friend Darbie yesterday, while taking my morning walk. We talked about the weather, the election (ugh) and, for some odd reason, the fact that over the weekend, her beautiful living room lamp had stopped working.

She explained to me how she figured out why the light wouldn’t turn on.

Here’s what she tried:

1. A new light bulb
2. A different electrical socket
3. A new cord (her boyfriend is very handy)

Number three did the trick – the lamp needed a new cord.

There were more steps she could have taken, but by running through them in increasing order of difficulty/time, and by tackling them just one at a time, Darbie was able to isolate and solve the problem quickly and efficiently.

We shared a laugh about how our fathers had taught us as little girls to solve problems, “one step at a time.” And of course, as RocketGirl, I began to think how this approach to problem solving applies to small businesses.

When clients first come to me, often they are excited to get everything in their businesses running smoothly. Sometimes they’ve been tolerating many issues for a long time; they want to fix everything all at once.

This is rarely a good idea, so I do my best to slow them down. Like fixing a broken lamp, you’re always better off breaking issues into smaller pieces and moving through them one step at a time.

Here’s why:

1.You get smarter. As you tease out the details of one issue, you learn a lot about how other areas of your business integrate. For example, I worked with Debbie, who wanted her CRM and her time-scheduling software to integrate with her email. So I started with just her CRM (she was the most invested in that system).

Along the way, we took time to understand the nuances, eventually moving her to a different time-scheduling software (Acuity). Only after solving that challenge did we migrate her email platform (GSuite).

2.You save money. I’ve seen lots of clients run full speed ahead into InfusionSoft and HubSpot, spending hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars each month. While these systems are a good fit for some, they are not suited for all.

If you break down your business challenges into smaller pieces, you’re likely to find simpler solutions that do the job just as well, often at a fraction of the cost.

3.It takes less time. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the more time you invest at the beginning to figure things out, the less time you’ll spend overall. I’ve see countless solo professional working as fast as possible, desperately trying to fix a problem without first doing the research and background work necessary to fully understand it. As a result, they suffer through several false starts and detours along the way.

And by the way, when I say “research and background work,” I’m not talking about a full blown study. Simply sketching out the situation and the possible alternatives will help you avoid a lot of rework, frustration and wasted time.

So remember, before you jump in for a quick, all-inclusive fix, take my dad’s advice and try to do things “one step at a time!”

I publish this newsletter (Rocket Fuel) every other week. From start to finish, it involves 19 different steps which I track with my favorite management tool, Teamwork.com.

The steps include “add content to Constant Contact,” “post newsletter to WordPress,” “publish on LinkedIn and Facebook,” “schedule Tweets,” and more. It also includes step #2 – send to my editor, Brenda Stewart, to make sure each issue makes sense and is grammatically correct.

After the first few newsletters Brenda and I worked on together, she had to ask if I had sent her a check for her work. Paying on time is important to me, but I couldn’t figure out why we were out of sync. Finally, I realized: our order of operations was not the same.

On Monday of the week I’m going to publish, I send Brenda the draft of this newsletter. On Tuesday she sends me her edits. On Thursday I publish and on Friday I send her a check. That seemed logical to me.

But there was a disconnect with the timing. Brenda was finished with her work on Tuesday and she (rightfully) assumed that by the following Monday at the latest, she would have the check in hand. But it wouldn’t happen if I was waiting until Friday to send it out.

I see simple disconnects like this in working relationships all the time. Two people are involved with a transaction, but neither is looking at it from the other person’s point of view. Disconnects only happen when there’s a problem, by which point some gear-grinding (if not relationship damage) has been done.

Here then, are three ways to make the path smoother when working with someone new:

1. Walk it through. When you begin to work with someone new, make sure you look at all the intersections you’ll have and think about it from both sides. How will you communicate? How often? How will you keep each other informed on progress? What happens if one of you gets off track?

2. Be clear about your intentions. A couple of years ago, my new client, Joe, asked me to fine-tune a plug-in that was already installed on his web site. He gave me a bunch of specific directions (e.g., underline this, line up that) and I got to work. It wasn’t until I had worked on his request for a couple of hours that I realized this plug-in was the wrong solution for his problem. We had a conversation and installed something else instead.

The point is, doing the right work is just as important as doing the work right. Now, I make sure to always have an “intention-driven” conversation at the beginning of each project.

3. Stay in touch. When working with clients or others for whom I am the client (like with Brenda), the more regularly and deliberately we communicate, the more smoothly things go. It might be a quick, five-minute check-in every Tuesday morning at 10am (for example) but that simple ritual keeps things rolling.

In the end, fixing the payment to Brenda was easy – I simply moved the “Send Brenda a check” task from the last step to the 4th one, immediately after “Brenda sends me edits.” The result? Brenda’s happier, she no longer has to remind me, and things are back to humming along as they should!