Walking thru the Fire!

We’ve all been there. The day is going smoothly. Until it isn’t! Without warning, something happens and you find yourself with flames reaching up around you and the pressure mounts. It’s at this moment when you find out the true character of the team you work with. I’m not just referencing the people that either report directly or indirectly thru you, but your peers, team members across the organization that engage in the resolution of the issue or create the communication strategy, and the leadership team.

I continue to be amazed at the team that I am lucky enough to be a part of every single day! We’ve recently had some issues pop up unexpectedly and it pure pleasure to watch these folks in action. Like any other organization, we have our fair share of challenges communicating with each other, getting decisions made in a timely manner or with projects hitting hurdles that they shouldn’t hit. If everything ran perfectly, there’d be no need to any of us to do our jobs. Right?

Most recently we had a production issue pop up – yes, it does happen. Anyhow, this issue wasn’t a burn down the house issue, but it was still important and it did have impact. My job is to engage and clear the deck where I can for the folks actually having to work the problem, provide a framework for the decision process, to ensure that the team is putting logical steps in place to validate the resolution and to ensure communication up to our executive team.

I’ve always respected how this team responds to production level issues. Without needing to be told, people assemble together, open up a conference line and the artificial walls that exist on a day to day basis disappear as people work the issue. In this particular instance, the folks involved had commandeered a spot around one of our engineers where people involved in the issue had congregated – sometimes we grab a conference room, sometimes we just pull together around a desk and work the issue. This day, it was the informal – people floating in and out of the group as needed to work the problem, troubleshooting the issue, and moving the ball forward. During the day we had developers, leads, Unix engineers, Unix admins, architects, database analysts and management members floating in and out of the conversation depending on what was needed to either walk thru what was known, replicate the issue and ultimately to find a reasonable resolution to the issue.

Nobody panicked, everyone felt comfortable challenging statements that were being made and checking individuals to ensure that the thought process was valid. Nobody took those discussions as personal challenges, everyone was working to ensure that we found a resolution to the real problem. I won’t lie, we chased down a few rabbit holes and had to back out before we ultimately found the real culprit and were able to truly solve the problem.

I love this team! They not only challenge each other to be the best, but they challenge me to be my best.

If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile