I have seen a lot of things in the IT service landscape but the communication hurdles during business-critical issues tops the chart. Especially, when you are working across multiple time zones.

Imagine that you need an approval from a whole chain of people just to send an urgent mass communication email to key stakeholders and impacted business users. The one person with the “golden approval stamp” is peacefully asleep in another time zone. Meanwhile, you are wide awake and scrambling to notify users and get the issue fixed. Ultimately, finding yourself tangled in even more confusion as communication delays pile up. The BU IT teams (well-meaning as always) jump in to send out their own emails to their local users. This ends up as a chaotic mess of messages with different tones, varying details, and sometimes wildly different levels of urgency. It is like a “game of telephone” gone wrong. No one knows who is in the loop OR what exactly they know. And impacted party – business – is clueless when the services will restore!

Clearly, we had to break through the red tape. So, I took matters into my own hands and led a process change that gave the major incident manager the ability to approve mass communications and a quick sign-off from the regional service manager. This way, the approvals were happening closer to the incident and cutting out the time zone delays. As an outcome by shifting approval rights closer to where incidents were happening, we cut out those pesky time zone delays and ensured that all stakeholders received timely and consistent updates.

The key to effective incident communication in a multi-geography IT environment is simplicity and speed. So, ask yourself whether your workflows make things easier OR do they just add more layers of complexity?

𝘗𝘚: 𝘚𝘰, 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐𝘛 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘭 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘭, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘶𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘴! 😉

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