Transparency can bring mixed blessings – no VIP user lists please

I was speaking with a colleague over lunch, I took him out to lunch to see what he’s working on and exchange stories and catch up, he was telling me about one of the multinationals that he had been dealing with. I’ve altered the names etc to ensure no one gets upset or identified.

The CEO called up the CIO, “I’m hearing that there is a VIP list he said”

“Not really” replied the CIO “We treat everyone the same, however for specific business sensitive users we do have a VIP flag set to avoid unnecssary delays, whatever works best for the company and delivery”

“hmm” replied the CEO (at this point as the story is told to me I can  just sense the CEO’s disappointment), “I don’t want to hide issues, whether it’s poor training, lack of investment or procedures, please remove this ‘flag’, for the next few weeks, I want to see how real people are treated, deal with them as normal.”

“I wouldn’t recomend it sir, but if that’s what you want let’s see how we get on for a few weeks, though we have been making an effort to improve our services”

“Yes” replied the CEO, “implement this for me will you, thanks” the CEO then hung up.

An email was sent out to IT teams “We’ve got rid of the VIP list, please ensure we treat any important issues sensitively.”

A week later the CFO’s pc blue screened and stopped working. He called the helpdesk and the following is an overview, a transcript of the results:

“Hi, my pc is broken” says the CFO

“Can I have your name please” asks the helpdesk, “I also need your pc name please and what’s the problem?”

“It’s Fredrick Smith, I don’t know my pc name, its stuck on a blue screen, it’s broken”. states the CFO

“Do you have the PC model” asks helpdesk

“Yes it’s a Dell” says CFO

“What kind of Dell” asks helpdesk

“It says Optiplex 745 or something, it runs Windows 7” says CFO

“Great I’ll send an engineer to your desk shortly” replies helpdesk

A call is logged, call number 1874292, this is the 18th call in the queue. The CFO waits, Gerald has a problem with notes, Michelle has an issue with her profile and in about 30 minutes a desktop engineer turns up at the CFO’s desk.

“Let me take a look he says”, he duly power cycles it, he tries safe mode. “It’s broken, it will need rebuilt, I’ll take it downstairs. Do you have a spare pc?”

“No” replies the CFO.

“Oh ok, I’ll see if we’ve got a spare one”. The engineer calls back, “we haven’t got a spare pc at the moment, I can have the pc rebuilt in about two hours, have you got any meetings to attend or something?”

“Yes” replies the CFO, “I’m not that bothered right now but get it done for the end of the day please”.

At 2pm desktop support calls the CFO, he’s out. So he leaves a message and sends an email to the CFO – “Your pc hard drive has failed, the drive is out of warranty, you therefore need to request a new pc via the helpdesk system. Once done we can deliver a new pc, this will need signed off by your line manager. In the meantime I’ll close this incident and recycle your broken pc”.

The CFO gets back to his voicemail and sees the email on his blackberry forwards it to helpdesk, “order me a new pc, I want it this afternoon please” and copies in the CEO.

Michael from pc ordering and allocations emails the CFO a form to be filled in asking “for sign off from his line manager, which then needs to be faxed back”.

The CEO replies “I’m not faxing anything, it’s 2013 when was the last time you sent a fax? Fix it. Supply a pc this afternoon please. No further  messing about or discussion on this.”

The CFO gets an email about 30 minutes later, “your call has been placed on hold until we get notification of line manager approval”.

CIO gets a phone call from an angry CEO “How many people have I got at the mercy of this nonsense? How many of my employees are counting paperclips because their pc is broken? Fix this now. Get Fred and anyone else with a broken pc a replacement today or come to my office to discuss.”

If you ever catch me at a conference I’ll tell you the whole story, its very interesting. Needless to say we had a convergence of three key issues:

• Focus on marginal cost – Fred owned his computer. It was charged to his cost center, his department, if Fred’s pc broke out of warranty that was Fred and his department’s issue not one for IT. IT was there to fix it where possible, if his pc needs replaced, he needs to co-ordinate it. A lack on focus of the total cost, how much had it cost for the engineer to collect  7 year old pc, run the diagnostics, attempt a rebuild, combined with the possibility of returning a 7 year old pc back into service, let alone the downtime cost of the CFO and the CEO debating a $400 expense.
• Poor incident management linking back to a service request process to order a new pc following a typical pc request as if the CFO had logged a call window shopping. Regardless of how the issue was dealt with financially or from a workflow perspective it should have been, pc broken, if pc older than 3 year warranty period, replace pc and bill back to department accordingly (or whatever process needed to happen) and deliver pc for configuration to end users requirements.
• A focus on problem identification rather than service availability. The pc broke. Swap it, diagnose or reclaim whatever parts are possible before it’s disposal but after the event. Not during the event.

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