Asin is a bright fresh recruit in the mid-sized organization that you lead as the CEO. She wanted to specialize in cyber security. Asin had joined with tremendous anticipation. She had picked your organization in preference to two other big names during the campus placement. Prior to deciding, she had actually visited your office and experienced the free and the people-first environment, interacted with your people etc.
Once on board, her first assignment was with a maintenance team servicing one of your long-standing customers. The customer is a highly-trusted financial services organization headquartered in the north-eastern US. Asin was a bit disillusioned to find the work appeared nowhere close to being engaging and interesting. The team lead convinced Asin to take it up and learn the process steps in commercial software development. The team was a long-standing one and the apps being supported were mature (but quite critical for the customer). The team’s effort was mostly to keep the lights on and make small improvements. Asin came up to speed quickly and soon started directly interacting with customer-side support staff and managers.
Asin frequently came up with ideas on how to improve things for remote support. She developed minor tools for automating things which she shared with the customer staff. All was going well. One day one of Asin’s tools caused a major disruption in deployment to production with potential data breaches. A furious customer VP has called you, pointed out the tool’s design flaw and asked for Asin’s immediate removal from the team. How would you and your organization address the situation at hand (corrective and preventive)?
Solution:
Preventive measures:
Asin being new to production environment and critical support, the team management should ensure increased supervision of her work and added some extra reviews and tests, before releasing her work products to the client to avoid such critical lapses. Even though Asin developed tools outside of the main application, towards automating some processes and remote support, they should have been subjected to the same rigor as the main deliverables. Particularly since they were being given to a customer and were impacting the live system.
Corrective measures:
1. The management should own up the fault as a systemic failure, arising out of compromised supervision and implement a more rigorous process for tools related to the customer, even if the tool were not part of the main software solution.
2. Asin should be protected from being made the scapegoat by including her in the new process being designed for release of tools. An objective retrospective, that identifies the specific mistakes which lead to the disruption, should be done.
3. If the customer insists on removal of Asian from the team, move her to any project in her area of choice, ‘cyber security’. It is important for the team to know, it is okay to falter, as long we learn and correct.
4 Responses
Hi Shiv, I can relate to this, it is a real different world.
I was invited a few times to address students appearing for CET exams as an industry person and found it challenging to connect with them. I was able to connect somewhat as one of their concern was what if they do not get into a good college, which I was able to address by sharing real life examples.
Thanks Vasu. College “brand” no doubt helps early on in work life – corporate doors open more easily. But down the line, it is people’s motivation and track record that helps build careers. I am sure we have all seen examples affirming this. I have stressed with the mentees that I work with. An aside, the mentorship program I am involved in spans 4-5 months and so, I have had time to work on the “connect”! Yes – takes time and effort.
Hi Shiv – very well written – thanks for the write-up.
Many years ago I was a volunteer mentor for a couple of youth as part of Dream A Dream’s life skills mentoring program. This was in person mentoring where the mentee and I would meet periodically (usually on a weekend) and discuss general topics. There was no prescribed structure though all mentors did go thru a few hours of in person training. Based on that experience I can corroborate that it takes time for the mentee to open up, especially in that case given their lack of confidence in expressing in English which was the recommended language for communication. Switching to Tamil (in one case where the mentee was from Tamil Nadu) helped.
Can also relate well to your point on swings in mood and engagement level of the mentee and the need for mentor to shift gears accordingly.
I am sure the mentees are benefiting a lot from your vast and varied experience – hope you will come back to mentor more such students after you complete the current mentorships and possibly take a break!
Thank you, Bhasker!