A Lesson Learned

We had reached a critical point in the meeting. For several weeks now, we'd been focused on defining a laundry list of projects that we were about to embark on. The goal was to standardize Support processes across the organization to achieve greater efficiencies in terms of: tracking metrics, managing incidents, monitoring and alerting, etc. You name it, we had it covered. All of the Support processes were to be same across the organization. Things were going to be much easier for everyone.

Right then, one of the managers declared that he had no interest in doing the work. So, we asked why. Was it a bandwidth concern? Was it a funding problem? Did she not find value in performing the work? The answer to all the questions was a No. So what was it we asked. Her response: "My manager simply doesn't care whether I do the work or not. She hasn't asked me to do it, so I don't think I really need to."

Someone else chimed in and said something quite similar.

There are several things we can learn from this story (true story, by the way). The first is for us Support managers out there:

Show your teams you care about their work.

Support teams go through a lot of stressful situations. It can be a thankless job. But if you as a manager don't take the time to acknowledge your group's efforts who will? There is nothing that kills momentum and initiative more than managers who don't recognize their groups' efforts. For Support teams, not having engaged managers who recognize the importance of the Support effort can be deadly: People get burnt out. The due diligence in monitoring goes away. They snooze on alerts instead of reacting aggressively. Or they simply feel too disengaged to work on those initiatives that can really make things better.

As managers we need to learn to take time to celebrate your teams' accomplishments. Send that thank you note or two. Gather the troops around and recognize that person who went the extra mile. A small cheer or clap might be all that's needed to re-energize that team member who used to be great but has fizzled out a bit.

For team members there's something to learn from this story as well:

Do the right thing.

Never stop doing the right thing, just because you don't think your manager cares. There's value in Availability metrics (this is a report on how well your apps are doing). Be relentless with Problem Management, this is what makes your applications more stable. Take on those projects that will help make it better all around. Never give up. Your efforts will be recognized. Who knows, perhaps one day you'll have the leadership of the group and you can be a different kind of manager.

In the end,We do what we do, not because our manager cares. We do it to enable a business. It takes a special person to wake up in the morning, know you're going to do Support and still come into the office with a smile on your face. In many respects the terms Application Support or Production Support don't really do justice to what we do.

So, keep the goal in mind and keep driving towards it. Your business will thank you for it and you'll feel much better about those daily achievements that come from Production Support.