The aftermath...

Well, it's been a month since one of my employees left - and I hired a new technical resource to replace the one that had been gone before that.

I will say that last half of June and first half of July have been an eye-opening, reality check of learning.  Now mind you, my world didn't turn upside down with the resource leaving - what happened would have happened with or with out them.  It was a NIGHTMARE two days before they left and it just kept going.

We have 14 reports that go out monthly to our clients to show the performance of our services (nothing that strange, just the system's availability and such).  Well, as it turns out 12 out of those 14 had to be redone.  Thus the nightmare start to life without the other resource.

There are many things that could be mentioned here, but I won't, about how bad the reports really turned out to be.  Let's just say I am lucky that we only ended up giving 2 clients credits back due to the "poor quality" of the data within our reports.

As we progressed through the next 4 weeks and into the new reporting cycle that ends in 2 days, we learned many, many, many things about the reports, our tolerance and stamina, our ability to keep pushing forward, to talk positively - in light of dire mistakes, and our ability to foresee a future that will be better because of what we have seen, done and corrected along the way.

I learned that the 3 people I have currently on my team (one is still in the probation period, but seems to be doing a helluva job) are dependable, loyal, encouraging (to me and each other) and just plain all out and out kick ass kind of folks.  The current reporting cycle is not without issues or errors so please don't read into that.  However, the difference this time is that I know it's getting fixed, I know the people working on it care and they are doing what it takes.  Not because I tell them to and not because they are "getting paid to".  They are doing it because they care about the job and the quality of their work and it shows.  I don't think I have ever been more proud of them.

I am sure there were plenty of WTF's, "are  you kidding me?", "now what?", shaking heads, beating our own heads on the desk and the like.  But the cool thing is, we have survived it, learned a lot and garnered the strength of those around us that are left.

You see what I didn't mention, is just before we started our meetings for the reviews this week, there was a layoff too.  We lost a couple of people in our division (not my team) that we deal with on a regular basis to our reporting cycles and those that are taking over will be going through the same things.  Asking questions on "how does this work?", "who normally does this?", "how did you get that information?" or "what do I do now?".  It won't be easy, it never is, but trust that you will make it and eventually, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel and something you complained about will get better and you will learn along the way, just like I did.  There were plenty of times where I used the F-bomb quite readily, where my employees heard the deep sigh that I do when I am flustered, I criticized something, apologized for something and told them I can only imagine the frustrations that they, too, were feeling.  I did make a promise to them that we'd learn from this and we'll make it better, and we are already starting on that.

The biggest thing I was worried about was how the product my group produced would ever be taken as accurate or right again because of all of the issues.  Much to my shock, many of the account team members thanked my team for the hard work it did and that our credibility did not suffer as much as I thought it would.  For that, I am thankful.  I had to go in front of the powers that be on Friday afternoon, and face the head hauncho to explain our errors, how they happened and what we did to fix them.  My manager was there and helped clarify one part where I stumbled a bit, but to one of my good friend's (old manager) advice, I recovered, continued with the explanation, kept my cool and DID NOT call him "sir" - she warned me that most upper managers don't like that years and years ago.  I answered to the best of my ability and candidly and managed to get a "good job" out of it.  So overall it wasn't bad.  I have added another career goal, and that is to never have to attend that meeting again.

So as I get ready to publish this and I look forward to a much better week ahead of me, I realize that yes, it was hard and nothing that happened in the month before would have prepared us for this or prevented it, we survived it and learned a lot about the job and our team.  I look forward to this week also, because I have another resource I am interviewing and I know that whomever we hire will be a person with the attitude and skills that we choose (I will solicit input from the team) and it will be someone who won't be afraid of the work we do and will be able to manage both the business analyst side and the technical side without intimidation.  And that to me, will be a WIN. :)