Alcohol as a Truth Serum

Alcohol has a strange way of impacting people. For some, it is a truth serum reducing inhibitions around what NOT to say. Others end up weaving great stories when imbibing on some spirits.

Such was not the case when Cindy’s husband approached me during a holiday party. “I don’t like it when Cindy gets paged. She doesn’t get paid for it and it interrupts our activities.”

This was NOT what I wanted to hear.

First, I really dislike Holiday Parties. Tending to the introverted like so many IT types, I’ve conditioned myself to get out of the corner and make a pass through the entire event. Once I complete my tour, I reward myself with a “get out of party” card. Second, having a discussion with a concerned spouse during an event can be an opportunity or a disaster.

Cindy, the Production Control Scheduler, looked on in horror. Her husband is a big burly man, intimidating at first sight. He was raising a concern, one I suspect Cindy had heard about privately on other occasions.

“I don’t like it when Cindy gets paged, either. It’s a bother for our Operators, too. What it often means is something is wrong in the schedule Cindy produced and by giving her direct insight to the issues we place her in a position of addressing them permanently so she won’t get paged again in the future.” Hubby suddenly began to see the light around the accountability Cindy had, and her direct power to impact the results.

It’s important to note we both worked in a manufacturing company having the rules of a Union without the Union…this played into my continuation. “Cindy is entitled to 4 hours pay every time she is paged. I know Cindy feels awkward about putting in for 4 hours if it was a quick call from the operators. I believe she only records “serious” time spent on issues, and on Monday I can sit with Cindy and review our reimbursement processes.”

At this point, Hubby seemed to be more interested in Cindy’s time recording practices than anything else, and I suspect Cindy had further conversations with Hubby in the coming days.

There are couple areas where conversation is good with the subject of on-call.

Companies need to be clear on their on-call approaches and whether any financial or other remuneration is received. My own sense is an occasional quick call comes with the territory. If logging on and researching is needed, we need to acknowledge the impact. Personally, I’m not a fan of rigorous time reporting on these kinds of interruptions. I’d rather be more lenient of someone leaving early to play golf or see the kids play (or whatever the passion is), or taking an occasional day off. (As a manager, I believe such accommodations should be within a week or two of a significant on-call event. I really dislike being confronted with 42 days off accumulated over the last two years.)

Staffs need to make their friends and family aware of what on-call means for them. Few industries have professionals with 24x7 requirements of IT. While “smart hands” may be in a rotation, managers are often called into every major issue and are on conference calls a large part.

Staffs also need to think about the root cause of the issues. Breathing a collective sigh of relief after a remediation is just the first step. Thoughtful analysis of the root case for the issue needs to be performed with an eye towards learning how to prevent issues in the first place. This effort must be focused on improvement, not on a witch hunt. “Post Action Review” is an important concept, where individuals and their managers can present findings to senior IT managers where a lively, thoughtful discussion can take place.

Through thoughtful, reasoned communications improvements can be made reducing issues and outages.