Bus Drivers Hate IT People
Do bus drivers really hate IT people?
It might seem so.
How often have we heard the warning "What if your key people get hit by a bus?" to talk about business continuance?
I've heard it so often that I have to wonder if there is a fleet of killer buses on the loose, just looking for network administrators, programmers, analysts, and all other kinds of IT people to run over. Why aren't the police doing anything about this? Why hasn't the CBC (Canada's National Television network) made it headline story?
I'm going to let you in on two secrets... First, the killer bus doesn't exist (aside from some B-Grade Teen horror flick), and secondly, there are better ways to motivate your team into not running as islands of experts, where each person is intrinsically necessary to the running of the operation. Remove one person, and the whole thing collapses.
This doesn't mean that your team members are not important, and their collective expertise is what gives your team its edge. But.. as history shows, the team rarely collapses when one person is removed or leaves. It may struggle for a while but it will find a new rhythm.
I'm not talking only about catastrophic events. I'm sure you have all experienced gaps in your team caused by maternity/paternity leave (this is Canada!), medical leaves, or the fact that people need to take a vacation once in a while.
Speaking of vacation... Can you (or anyone on your team) actually take a vacation? If they do, do you require them to "be available"?
So while there is not a killer bus, there are a number of things you can do to prevent disruptive events on your team.
As a leader, it is important to find a way to set up your team to handle these life events, and one of the exercises that can help is to define a service catalog for your department. What is it you provide? To whom? By whom? In what time frame?
Once you go through this exercise you'll soon discover gaps in coverage where you may have to provide experience, training, or develop documentation so people on your team can be away on vacation, or leave, or at a conference, and your key services can still be delivered. On my team, we call this "having 2 (levels) deep for every key skill".
If you haven't considered this and still rely on your team to "deliver 110%, and worry when anyone is "not available", you may be bordering on becoming an abusive boss. Marcus Buckingham, in his book First, Break all the Rules mentions that people don't quit companies, they quit their bosses.
Having a key person on your team quit is likely more disruptive and expensive than having them take a 2 week holiday.
As a closing thought... I quit talking about the killer bus to start the discussion about continuity planning. I now ask the question "What if your key player won the lottery and moved to a tropical island?" It has the same impact on the organization, but there's much less carnage.
What if YOU won the lottery? Who could fill in for you? I'll talk about legacy in another post.
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Images: Licensed under Creative Commons
Note: This was previously published on LinkedIn.
About the Author:
I'm the Chief Information Officer for Appleby College, in Oakville, Ontario Canada, where my team is transforming the delivery of education through innovative application of technology.
I'm convinced that IT leadership needs to dramatically change how IT is delivered rather than being relegated to a costly overhead department.
In addition to transforming IT in my role as CIO, I look for every opportunity to talk about this... writing, speaking and now blogging on BeBee ( www.bebee.com/@kevin-pashuk ) , LinkedIn, ITWorld Canada, or at TurningTechInvisible.com.
I also shoot things... with my camera. Check out my photostream at www.flickr.com/photos/kwpashuk
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Comments
Lisa Gallagher
7 years ago #20
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #19
Thanks for resurrecting this one Ken... Someone has to warn us about those killer buses...
Harvey Lloyd
7 years ago #18
Ken Boddie
7 years ago #17
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #16
Your comment got me thinking back to the time when my wife and I lived in Virginia. We became big fans of two MIT educated 'galoots' that took calls about car problems and spent the majority of the hour laughing at their own jokes. (NPR's Car Talk). One of their regular schticks was to talk about how their Italian mother would deal with their stupidity... a well executed 'dope slap' to the back of the head - not violent, but a tap to the back of their heads to draw their attention to how stupid they were acting.. Perhaps a bus is too drastic a measure for IT leaders of major companies, where a dope slap would suffice.
Phil Friedman
7 years ago #15
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #14
What a delight to have you back Sir Ken Boddie.
Ken Boddie
7 years ago #13
Dean Owen
7 years ago #12
Javier Cámara-Rica 🐝🇪🇸
7 years ago #11
Paul \. Of course not. Development team will be always in Madrid. We have great engineers and cheaper. This is a great competitive advantage ;)
Robert Cormack
7 years ago #10
Thanks for that, Kevin. Bisquick would thank you, too, but it would be unprintable here.
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #9
An astute observation Robert. It gives 'disruption' a whole new perspective (but not as disruptive as buying a used Mynah bird with a pottie mouth)*. I think I'm still holding out for the big lottery win. * If this part of the comment makes no sense to you... buy Robert Cormack's book - You can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can't Make it Scuba Dive)
Robert Cormack
7 years ago #8
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #7
I am very good friends with a number of people who work in tech sales. There is enough material for several posts on that world. Quotas and systems that set each member up as competition with the person at the next desk seem to be normal. It seems to take everything I know about building high performing teams and tosses it out the window... I'm sure you are not alone in your sentiments Aurorasa.
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #6
You might be on to something there Aurorasa Sima. Getting a developer to document is the holy grail of IT leadership. We (as do many others) build it into the job description (it gives us leverage at performance review time), but mostly we have taken the time to agree on which point on the documentation continuum is appropriate. For smaller organizations, No documentation is not good, but neither is the Rationale Rose level of producing a booklet of documentation for every button and user experience (or other industrial strength beastie unless you are building nuclear submarines).
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #5
As long as the Paternity leaves weren't all yours Randy Keho... Keep in mind in Canada, paternity/maternity leaves (combined) can be up to one year in length. Most typically each parent takes a 6 month turn in my experience. That's enough to put a dent in your development schedule.
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #4
I agree Paul \ and everyone else who leads a team of bright techies must consider. As for a NA based dev team? Maybe they need a Canadian based CIO. I happen to know a good one.
Randy Keho
7 years ago #3
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #2
I've given up buying tickets Phillip Hubbell since there is a family curse (or seems to be) about winning any lottery. I just donate the money directly to charity. That being said, the lottery ticket scenario is certainly more real than the 'killer bus' scenario, and a lot less gruesome.
Kevin Pashuk
7 years ago #1