June 4, 2018: Question Series #5
Written By: Marc Moskowitz
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You know the drill, don’t you? Emergency! Quick, get on a conference call, Skype meeting, and/or Hangouts Meeting! We’re about to lose all our customers or our systems are about to implode in XYZ country and cause every employee not to be able to do their job. Wake up the offshore team if you have to! What, the 2AM call isn’t working? Let’s get a virtual “war room” established. What, we already have the same five people in four other “war rooms”? We’re going to work around the clock until this is solved!!! Problem solved! Problem solved! The root cause was a user training issue… Rinse and repeat!
We have all been here before…especially those of us who have been in the Information Technology space for any length of time. The root cause, as in my silly example above, won’t always be user training, but the fire drills, war rooms, and constant cries of emergency are real. As leaders, there will always be times to declare an emergency and gather up the team, but we must be careful how and when to use them. Not everything is a true emergency or a rush job. If we use these tactics too often, the value of calling an emergency diminishes to zero over time. Your people will ignore the call-to-arms and treat it like every other piece of work.
“When Everything is an Emergency: Nothing is an Emergency”
There are other things that happen when you call for emergencies too often. They can include:
- Losing sight of other work already in process (and failing to deliver it on time); say goodbye to your story point commitments!
- People get confused about what to work on first, as there could be several emergencies happening at once
- Your team begins to think that you don’t have good judgement in terms of your prioritization and leadership skills
- Lethargy: Your team will begin to shrug it off each and every time and/or say “Yes, Sir” just to get past the conversation. People will get tired of it and lose productivity because of it.
Obviously, all the above things are negative in nature and will begin to drive away some of your best employees. As a leader, it is your job to make sense of the chaos and truly filter out the real emergencies. In most cases it’s a subjective call, but there are questions you can ask to make better decisions and use your resources wisely. These questions can include:
- Are customers or revenue truly at stake if it doesn’t get fixed right here and now?
- Will a substantial amount of your internal workforce be unable to perform their daily jobs for more than a few hours?
- Have you truly missed your stated SLAs to the point that escalation is all but certain?
- Will you really miss out on something earth-shattering if you wait until the next morning to complete a presentation and/or have a meeting?
- What is the effect of calling an emergency on efforts that are already in progress?
- Has enough due diligence been done on the issue to point to your team as being the right place to resolve it?
If you can answer several of these questions to the affirmative, you most likely have a true emergency on your hands and need to move accordingly. Conversely, if you can’t answer in the affirmative, then it’s probably something that can wait until the next day or even be scheduled into your standard operating procedures.
As simple as all this sounds, making the “emergency” call is a key struggle for many leaders today, especially in our 24/7-connected world. We are in a need-it-now world, but having the patience and foresight to make the right call, can lead to happier employees, less turnover, and less lost productivity. It is my experience that your employees will go deep into the well for you, when they truly know you take calling an emergency seriously.
Those of you who have read my previous articles, know that I love my baseball analogies, so I’ll close this topic with one. The most successful baseball managers are the ones that know how to deal with emergencies on the pitching mound. When do you call for that next pitcher? Are they truly out of steam and in a heap of trouble, or can they make it out of the inning unharmed? The managers that know when to have patience and know when to panic (and make the switch) are usually on the winning end. They ask themselves key questions before they decide.
- Is the game really on the line?
- Is the pattern they are seeing from the pitcher normal or abnormal?
- What do the statistics say?
- What will happen to the rest of the pitching staff if I make the call now versus the following innings?
Hall of Fame Manager Tony LaRussa of the St. Louis Cardinals was a master of this art. He virtually invented the modern day pattern of making this call and using his bullpen. As a result, he owns one of the highest win totals in baseball history (see his results here)
Once you’ve called an emergency, it’s now your job to ensure it gets taken care of appropriately. Just like in your personal life, how you handle stressful situations will show your true colors as a leader and a person. I have learned a few things over the years to help me handle just about anything. Here is my “twelve” step program:
- Breathe, take a step back, hit an inanimate object if need be, suspend my disbelief, and replay/re-read the details of the emergency again
- Virtually all situations are not as bad as they seem at first, so I start to brainstorm my list of things that need to be done. Depending on the situation, I do this on my own first, or immediately call in my key players to help create the list.
- Decide upon how we are going to track and communicate the emergency. Is email ok? Does it require an on-going conference/video call? Is a detailed spreadsheet/ticket entry required?
- Figure out how quickly the issue needs to be resolved. This will drive many of the execution details and how you communicate to your stakeholders and team. Most emergencies are emergencies because they need to be resolved quickly. That said, I’ve seen many “emergencies” that are false alarms. The key is to truly figure out if it’s a real emergency or a false one and act accordingly.
- Determine who the right players on your team are to help you solve the problem
- Perform a damage assessment to see what you are dealing with
- Create an execution plan that includes: communications, the actual fix approach, and what special tools are needed. Don’t forget to think about the need for technology, people, travel, and money!
- Document the root cause of the issue once you know it (so you can prevent it from happening again)
- Provide updates to your stakeholders at regular intervals as determined in your execution plan; send a final update once resolved
- Thank and reward those that went above-and-beyond in fixing the issue (even if they might have caused it)
- Review the root cause, coach your team on why it happened, and review what the team will do to prevent it in the future
- Smile and rejoice that you have used this “twelve” step process to solve an emergency, recognize your people, and build a brighter future!
What do you think? What questions would you add to the list and ask yourself before declaring an emergency? What steps do you take once you decide an emergency call is in order?
Thanks for reading!
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