IT: Forget The 'I', It's All About 'T'eam

While there are all kinds of technologies available in the world today, many a time, it does happen that the creators of technology – the people – take a back seat. In my opinion, they are more important than the technology. Hence, it is extremely important for CTOs, CIOs and IT managers to concentrate on developing, encouraging and motivating their IT teams, which play a critical role in managing the IT operations and solution implementation, this should be done both at the professional and personal level.

We have a very small IT team but all of them are equal contributors to any particular new thought or idea. Apart from formal meetings, there are regular informal sessions as well wherein any employee can walk into a senior IT manager’s cabin or my office to suggest any idea about a change in the existing IT process or for developing a new process or solution. This can be to overcome an existing business challenge or to add a new feature to an existing solution or to build a new, innovative solution altogether.

Even cross-functional idea sharing is encouraged. For example, if a system administrator wants to share an idea to another department’s benefit, say customer service or operations, the concerned person will be heard appropriately for his views. In case if the idea is considered to be practical and rendering business benefits, the employee is rewarded appropriately.

We have also structured e-learning programs, workshops and training sessions that are identified in the yearly performance review of a particular employee. The training is geared towards developing the soft skills of employees like communication, interpersonal skills, presentation skills etc. The employees are also encouraged to pursue their career path in the organisation. They are groomed accordingly with the necessary skills program to achieve their goals. It can be as simple as an English language skills program for individuals coming from a vernacular educational background.

We also organise a general meet for the family members of the teams once or twice annually. This would create engagement among the family members.

The most enriching team-building experience comes out during deadline-based projects. It gives the CIO an opportunity to establish the required bonding in the team and also to take out the best out of his employee base. Here is a run-through of a project at DHL that gave me some revelations on team building.

Project-Based Learning as a CIO

The project involved shifting the country office location (in 2004) in the span of three months, right from scratch. The old office space was falling short for the scale of operations, hence, we had to move quickly. The most critical element was that this movement also involved the re-location of the data centre and the call centre. This involved work pressure not only for the IT teams and other internal functions but also for the vendors.

At the outset we, as a team, accepted the challenge to live up to the expectations. It was also decided that the quality of the work would not be compromised for meeting the deadline, which meant stretching ourselves beyond regular work hours. This included working 24X7 for some of the associates, co-ordinating with the vendors, other teams etc and also adjusting with other team members on time and other aspects. The toughest challenge was that the data centre and the call centre were to be shifted simultaneously without any disruption. Our aim was that the customer experience should not be compromised during the transition.

This is where the role of the IT team became important. We were a team of 12 at that point in time. The functional experts took leadership positions in planning and designing the operation. I took the leadership role as a member of the team or a facilitator but not as an IT head (Lesson: Let the respective guys take initiative, this improves their confidence). So the functional experts were allowed to take leadership in their respective areas be it telecom, vendor management, infrastructure etc and they were given authority to take decisions to be able to meet the deliverables before the closing date. Employees had to work on an average for 12 to 16 hours a day.

There were many lessons learnt during this phase in terms of how a junior employee can rise to the occasion and get the job done well.

Giving a Chance to Your People

One of the employees from the IT team actually rose to the occasion during this project to make sure that he had an effective liaison in place with telcos, including government service providers like MTNL, for the smooth transition of the data circuits and telephone lines from the old to the new office. We didn’t want to change the toll free number while the transition was happening and also after the new office began operations. It was decided to shift the telephone lines on a Sunday night. The call flow is relatively low during that period. However, we just had a window of about a minute or two to ensure calls start landing in the new premise. The project manager, who was handling the Wide Area Network (WAN), took the responsibility to co-ordinate with the concerned executives from MTNL. He had built a rapport with them after working in this capability since a long time.

In case he wouldn’t have shown the pro-activeness, this process would have involved meetings between the MTNL senior officials and their DHL contemporaries, thereby making it a time-consuming process. This also eliminated hassles both from MTNL and DHL’s end. There was also this perception that MTNL being a government body, would have a lot of deliberations, however, the project manager convinced their official to stay back at night to provide support and made sure the transition was seamless and without any disruptions. The noticeable fact was this was not a one-night job. It involved days of co-ordination with the MTNL officials by providing the necessary information, satisfying their queries and offering justifications demanded, which in the end resulted in an excellent support from them for our re-location initiative.

The Right Doses of Appreciation & Motivation

Another major experience was linked to the server transportation to the new office.

While transporting servers to the new location, some of the IT team members were with the transporter all the time to handle any unforeseen events. They were following the transport vehicle on their bikes, just in case if there is a blockage on the route and contingency needs to be activated. We had done the micro planning of alternative routes, in case any blockages arose in the pre-decided route. The IT team members were very enthusiastic in doing this micro planning. This can only happen if they are appropriately appreciated and encouraged at the right time. The transport vehicle’s driver was surprised with the activeness of the team. However, we didn’t want to leave things to assumptions and made sure that the servers are transported on time and securely at the new location for set-up; with all this effort and planning, the servers were back in action for business users at the committed time.

Matching Footsteps with the Team & Scaling New Heights

It is extremely important for a leader to be actively engaged with his team from time to time, not from his office only but with hands-on execution; in some of the critical projects to give them the necessary guidance, support and confidence required; and also learn himself from the challenges or opportunities, which may come up during the course of the project, only to emerge as a more experienced person himself.

Dhumal is Senior Director-IT, South Asia at DHL Express.