HOT POTATO THEORY – way to survive BT

My current project in a broad sense is improving the customer experience for Wholesale Broadband.

A typical average day my calendar will look like this

8:00-9:00: WBC Performance Review

8:15-9:00: WBC Systems Stability Plan

9:45-10:00: WBC Morning log calls

9:30-10:30: Daily Fallout tracker call

11:00-12:00: Systems stability call

12:30-12:30: CE Lead update call

1:00-2:30: OTD call for BB

1:00-1:30: Weekly reporting call

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So the day continues but have you noticed that there are multiple calls that demand your attention almost every hour of the day and combine it with the calls that get put out on the day because of some crucial issue. Unless you have learnt the art of successfully cloning yourself or going behind in time it will be impossible for a normal human being to attend all of these.

So if you are wondering how can a CE lead go through his/her day.. here is the answer ‘HOT POTATO THEORY – FIFO and ROUND ROBIN STYLE’ The theory holds states that at any given point there will be a number of hot potatoes (important issues) floating around. But only a few of them are genuinely hot potatoes others are the noise and background issues that are unavoidable if you are working in a company as huge as BT.

Next question is how to distinguish the real hot potatoes from fake hot ones. That is where the FIFO (First In First Out) comes into play along with the ROUND ROBIN style. If somebody hands you a hot potato you deal with it until the next hot potato comes into your hands and you keep doing this until you find that the same hot potato is being handed to you every time. This means that it has accumulated enough heat for you to divert your energy into it and you will see that people are also ready to talk to you about it. (Unlike the other hot potatoes where people will not even care.)

Lesson learnt is focus your energy on that one issue, but identifying that issue is the hardest task and which might take time.. So keep  watching this space until the new version of this theory is published.

If you are all wondering that how I managed to articulate this theory so well, I must admit this is not my invention but from a colleague of mine J.