What comes to mind when you hear that word?
Predictable, Regular, Procedural?
or maybe,
Monotonous, Mundane, Tedious?
I’ll confess, for me it is the latter. I’m an IT guy but
most definitely a projects guy. So I need my challenges to have a start, middle
and most importantly an end. I need closure, a result, an outcome, something to
look back on, hopefully with a proud sense of achievement, but at the very
least to feel that I’ve learned something.
So when I took on running our IT Operations and Service
Management team I was a little nervous about how well I could cope with
shifting my mind set. Running an operations team requires one to value the
positive side of routines, recognising the importance of stability and repetition,
rejoicing in the bliss of calm normality.
Three years on and I’m still in awe at the professionalism and
passion that I see from my team every day in tackling numerous challenges in
the knowledge that there will be more of the same the very next day. They work tirelessly,
often at unsociable hours, with the only measure of success being that no one
really notices anything different. Then on one cold Tuesday morning in January my
new life of successful normality was shattered. Clicking through my regular news
feeds I came across an article that ruined my customary bowl of muesli. Our data
centre provider had entered into administration. This was not predictable, certainly
not normal, and far from maintaining any sense of stability.
During the week that followed a bad situation developed into
and increasingly worse one as it became clear that the administrators were
struggling to find a buyer for the business. This culminated in a demand for
their top 20 clients to each pay a substantial fee to keep the data centre
running for just one week. Clearly an unsustainable position, and so a plan was
required - this was certainly not going to be routine.Rather than bore you with the technical details, impressive that they are, I will save that for another day and for another blogger to articulate the complexity of what we achieved.
Instead, I would like to focus on the phenomenal teamwork
that I observed over an intense 48 hours. I saw everything from utter despair
through to complete joy. Individuals often diametrically opposed on pretty much
everything working tirelessly to help each other into the small hours.
Tensions rose, patience wore thin, moods plummeted, but
never for long. Such was the enormity of the task at hand that no one was under
any illusion that in order to succeed an extraordinary effort was required.
Individual brilliance had to be coupled with selfless support of others in
order for the goal to be achieved. There was a plan, in fact there were many
plans, but these were constantly re-written as the complexity of the task required
quick thinking to adapt to emerging challenges, regroup and then move forwards.
The team, which was spread across several sites, became united
by a common goal, and demonstrated that, given the right resources, good
communication and a positive attitude, anything is possible.
What I personally learned that weekend is this: I know routines are absolutely necessary to
get through life. They provide structure and certainty to an otherwise chaotic
world. But they are largely over-looked. The teams that deliver the flagship
projects are in the spotlight, living or dying by their results which are there
for all to see. I know. I’ve built a career on it.
However in a crisis, when all seems lost, when plans are
constantly being torn up, it’s not the project guy that you need, it’s the operational
one. They know that nothing is routine, nothing is quite what it seems. Plans
are good but rarely last beyond the time it takes to write them down.
Expertise, teamwork, speed of thought, perseverance and determination, these
are all qualities that help you in the small hours to pick yourself up, dust
yourself down and try and find another way forward.
To succeed a great company needs great products and services,
created by talented, innovative individuals. But equally it needs these to be
delivered on a daily basis without fail by exceptional, assiduous but most of
all reliable teams.
TDX Group has both, in abundance.
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