If you're a seasoned IT pro, you've probably run across a situation where you fixed a simple problem for someone and they looked at you like you had two heads, exclaiming: "How did you know how to do that?" You probably answered, "I don't know, it just seemed like the right answer." Naturally, they think you're joking with them or, worse, patronizing them. In fact, you weren't. (This XKCD strip encapsulates this concept perfectly.)
What these casual users can't understand is that the same intuitive approach persists all the way down to the deepest levels of IT. The only difference is that, the deeper you go, the fewer menu options there are to choose.
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For example, I was recently presented with a problem where email sent from a site to comcast.net and hotmail.com users was not getting delivered and was queueing up on the mail server. Mail sent to other sites was delivered without issue, and the mail server had clear, unfettered access to port 25 on any mail server you tried, including comcast.net and hotmail.com. The only other datapoint was that this server's external address range had been migrated from one IP subnet to another.
My first reaction was to do a reverse lookup on that IP address and note that there was no reverse entry. Then telnetting to comcast.net's MX on port 25 elicited the expected message that it refuses to accept mail from servers with no valid reverse DNS entry. Add the entry with the provider and flush the queue. Problem solved.
Just about every action in IT boils down to troubleshooting; even new builds require troubleshooting of integration issues. Those with strong general troubleshooting skills can fix just about anything, even systems they've never seen before, given enough time and access to Google. Add in experience and foundation, and you have someone who can at the very least find the source of any problem within a short period of time. These people are absolute gold and should be cherished in any organization. They may not be the ones that make the bacon, but they save it on a regular basis.
But there's another important element to people like this: They're not afraid to push the button when the situation calls for it.
