This incident happened nearly 10 years ago, when I was manager in a unit handling specific product vertical for few European clients.  We were developing a large release– which included software from many verticals.  One day before the software delivery milestone, we verified the checklist, passed sanity check on the onsite environment, and tested interfaces between different product components.  Having done with all checks, I along with my team left for home while another product vertical team was finishing their internal checks.

Around 10pm, I received a call from my director.  She told me that one of the other vertical team had encountered a problem which is threatening delivery. The experts are in the office but haven’t found the solution yet. She asked me if I could come over.

I was not familiar with internal design of that product, so thought I might not be of much help at short notice.  However since failure of one in a team is failure of all and problem had to be solved that night, I told her that I will be in office. I reached office and saw 7-8 people from specific product vertical working. Another manager from different vertical had also came to office (just like me).

Since we both were from different components, we gathered information about which flow is failing, different permutations, what has been tried so far etc and started to give our suggestions.  None of the easily implementable suggestions worked, and the team started working on other suggestions while needed more time.

While team was focusing on cracking the problem, around midnight the water dispenser ran out of water.  At that time, there were no pantry boys in the office. Call it luck or Murphy’s law, there were no spare containers available on our floor and no bottles. People had to go to other floor to drink water or fetch it in water cups for their colleagues.  This was a distraction and wasting a lot of time.

I went to the lower floor and brought the 20lt container on my shoulder.  Everyone , including security guards were looking at me with surprise.  We installed this new container in the pantry and everyone focused fully on technical problem resolution. After few hours, eventually problem was solved and a successful delivery made. The fact that we were able to focus our energy on the main issue by eliminating distraction did help greatly in it.  

I remember this incidence because it offers many invaluable lessons. 

·        Team is successful when everyone is successful – I am not saying this in context of your immediate team, but all teams which are required to complete their work for overall work to be considered complete. Whether it is designing different components of a machine, SW, construction work or some chemical process.  In industry, you will always have dependency or relation with some other team, so try to broad your definition of team. 

·        If best is not available, make best of what is available – Do not wait for perfect resources. If we would keep on waiting for pantry boy till next morning, imagine the outcome. 

·        Do not hesitate to ask for help – You might be expert in your field. However when faced with a wall or deadlock, it is good to ask others for their perspective.  Even if that person doesn’t have some understanding as you.  Eventually, you have to make a decision on whether to implement the advise or not, but by not asking you are limiting your options anyways. 

·        Do not be afraid to get your hands dirty – Be open to help in whichever way you can. “It’s not my job” or “this work is not my level” approach will not help you much in the career.

We have encountered much more challenging situations which required greater skill, persistence and determination, and so will you in your career.  The trick is to learn from seemingly small incidents also, which lay the strong foundation for professional development.

Hope this was useful read.

Have a good career.