Robert Standefer

I have a genetic disorder called Crouzon Syndrome. This disorder causes certain facial deformities that are corrected via reconstructive surgery. From 1991 to 1993, I underwent these surgeries. One of them, performed in 1992, involved correcting my orbital hypertelorism. Without getting too deep into the gory details, I will say that it involved inserting a needle in one tear duct and pulling it out of the tear duct on the opposite eye.
What does this have to do with IT, you ask? Bear with me.
During that eye surgery, I woke up. I was completely aware of what was going on: I could hear the surgeons talking, I could feel the needle in my eye, I could hear the equipment monitoring my vitals. I couldn’t move (due to the muscle relaxant), and I couldn’t talk. I was trapped in a waking nightmare, and it is one of the most devastating experiences of my life. I don’t know how long I was awake, but I knew that if it lasted much longer, I would surely die. I said a silent prayer in my mind and then fell back asleep. I was sixteen years old at the time.
When I woke up in the recovery room later, I was screaming. All I could do was curl up into the fetal position and cry out for my mom. The nurse tried to calm me down, and I said, “I woke up during surgery!” At that moment, all hell broke loose in the recovery room and suddenly I was surrounded by many doctors and hospital staff.
I was finally able to calm down when my mom came into the recovery room and the doctors undoubtedly injected me with a sedative. Once all the fracas had subsided and I was wheeled out, my anesthesiologist approached me. I couldn’t see him, as my eyes were bandaged, but I could hear him. His voice wavered as he expressed how sorry he was, and then he broke down into a sobbing apology. I told him it was ok, that I forgave him, and then my dad drove me home.
Statistics vary on how many people wake up during surgical procedures, but the number hovers around 1 in 1000. Those are pretty bad odds for those of us going under the knife. There is a plethora of different reasons for surgical wake-ups, including heart conditions, unusual brain activity, nicotine, and, in my case, a bad judgment call on the part of the anesthesiologist.
And there’s the correlation to enterprise IT. The physician, who had years of education and experience, professional certifications, and professional licenses, made a mistake. He’s human. He assessed a situation, made a decision, and it didn’t work out.
Likewise, IT workers draw upon years of experience and education, plus industry certifications, to ensure quality software and systems. And just like my anesthesiologist, we make mistakes that all of that experience and education can’t prevent.
How we react to those mistakes defines the strength of our IT infrastructure. There are countless processes and paradigms that can help your organization manage risk and react to it. You can go rigid with CMMi, be loose with agile, or somewhere in between. The system works, as long as your processes are well-documented and understood by the people involved in the decisions.
Quality is a universal concept. Build it in and things won’t go wrong. Add it on and you’ll be able to react. And if you do make a mistake, accept responsibility for it so everyone can move on. At the end of the day, the last thing we want is the customer to wake up screaming about his system being offline.