On Dec 25, 2009, at 9:27 AM, George Bonser wrote:

> Capt. Sullenberger did not need to fill out an incident
> report, bring up a conference bridge, and give a detailed description of
> what was happening with his plane, the status of all subsystems, and his
> proposed plan of action (subject to consensus of those on the conference
> bridge) and get approval for deviation from his initial flight plan
> before he took the required actions to land the plane as best as he
> could under the circumstances.

Conversely, the ever-increasing outright hostility and contempt evinced towards 
their customers by airlines worldwide -  especially US-based airlines - over 
the last decade or so, all in the name of 'regulations', offers a useful 
counterexample.

When it comes to larger organizations, this latter scenario is more the norm 
than what you describe, in my experience.  Critical problems are left 
unresolved for days/weeks/months; if one attempts to report an issue which is 
causing problems for many of an organizations customers worldwide, but one 
isn't oneself a direct customer of said organization, one is often as not 
ignored and shunted aside.

This isn't specific to the SP realm; it's simply a function of increased size, 
which leads to increased bureaucritization, which leads to dehumanization and 
the subordination of the organization's ostensible goals to internal politics, 
one-upsmanship, and blame-laying, no matter the industry in question.  The 
folks with a can-do attitude who're willing to buck the system in order to do 
the right thing for the customer stand out in stark contrast to their peers, 
and in many cases end up paying a price in terms of career advancement because 
of their willingness to Do The Right Thing.

'Process' is all too often merely a ruse designed to avoid responsibility, 
shift blame/liability, justify hiring lower-cost/unqualified employees whilst 
shedding expensive/competent employees, and indulge in empire-building.  We've 
seen this throughout corporate America with the 'permanent Y2K' of SoX and 
HIPAA, and the increasing involvement of government in terms of 
telecommunications-related rule-making which ends up directly affecting SPs.

I'm a big advocate of standards and change-control, and not an advocate of 
seat-of-the-pants, midnight engineering - except when the latter is necessary, 
as in the examples you give.  

Unfortunately, many folks who work in larger organizations are actively 
prohibited from indulging in fluid, situationally-approrpriate problem 
resolution; and because of the aforementioned siloing of ops and engineering, 
their valuable first-hand experiences and the lessons learned thereby aren't 
taken into account during the design and rulemaking processes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobb...@arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

    Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

                        -- H.L. Mencken




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