Three Doctors
There’s a parable I heard at some point that’s always stuck with me. The more I’ve mulled it over, the more I see parallels to work (especially in my field, IT):
A parent had 3 children, all of whom became doctors.
The youngest was a good doctor, and could cure a disease after it ravaged its patient. Due to their skill their name was known throughout the country.
The middle child was a better doctor, and could cure disease at the sign of its first symptoms. Due to their skill their name was known all over their county.
The eldest child was even better, and could cure disease before the patient even knew they were sick. Due to their skill their name was known throughout their hometown.
I particularly enjoy the inverse relationship of skill to outcome and the correlation of reputation to severity. Everyone would agree the eldest child is the best doctor - who wants to get sick? Despite their immense skill, however, only the people in their home know who they are. Everyone would agree the youngest child is the most well known doctor - we all know the names of folks who’ve put out massive fires.
Skill vs. Outcome
I heard at some point that a bored IT department is a good thing. It means everything is working as intended, there are no outages and everyone is happy. (Think about it, how often do you go hang out with the IT folks except when something breaks?...). (Go hand out with the IT folks more). While it is possible IT is bored because they’re totally oblivious to problems, it’s also possible they’re incredibly good at planning and preventing problems from cropping up.
You can’t complain about a problem that never happens. The “problem” with that approach, however, is no one knows that you’ve done anything. There’s no visible action you’ve taken that helps folks… so they don’t know who you are. IT can, however, take steps to change that.
Many IT departments publicly release metrics on things like system up time, number of tickets resolved, how long it takes to solve tickets etc. These metrics help tell the story that may be invisible - how many issues are avoided. Many groups also proactively reach out to partner teams to inform them of what they’re up to. Systems updates aren’t as impressive as putting out fires, but they do keep the house from burning down.
Reputation and Severity
Everyone knows someone who is a “fire fighter”, that person who can come into a terrible situation and somehow fix it. These folks are certainly necessary as bad things happen… but it’d be much better if those problems never happened or were avoided entirely. Dr. Fauchi is a good example of this. He is handling an immense task with incredible skill… but in another reality COVID would have been contained and we’d never have heard of him or learned of his skill.
Personally this correlation drives me nuts since it suggests all the preventative work we do is essentially unknown. Even worse, folks may get rewarded for reacting to problems instead of preventing them from happening (that said, to the best of my knowledge it’s impossible to measure things that don’t happen).
While I have never found a single “best” solution to this challenge, I’ve found a few things that do work:
Be proactive with messaging - Ensure your partner teams know what you’re up to (at least at a high level), and that they understand the value to them. Patching a server sounds REALLY boring, until you realize it prevent a massive data breach that just hit someone else.
Help your team understand the importance of diligence - It feels good to be the firefighter… everyone knows who you are and how good you are (at least at putting out blazes). It can be hard to get folks to shift to prevention, but make the effort to help your team see the value. (Lower blood pressure, for one).
Culture of sharing - Fires sometimes spring up when someone doesn’t feel comfortable raising a concern or admitting a mistake. I’ve found that calling out my own mistakes in our team communications has helped de-stigmatize this a lot (it also helps others avoid the same problem). Encourage others to do it as well, and soon folks won’t feel as bad if they do make a mistake.
