Namaskar 🙏
Welcome to the second article in the series of “Handling Incidents Mindfully”. If you have landed directly to this article I suggest you go to the first part of the series, where you will find a brief introduction and the first step in this journey — Acceptance. Let’s dive into the second part “Do not React, Respond !!!”.
What is the difference between React and Response? Aren’t they one and the same? Yes React is as related to Respond as Javascript is to Java. We will start by taking a look at the definition of React and Response with the help of an example.
React — When you act without giving a thought it is known as react. The action is almost instant and is governed by your subconscious mind. A textbook example in mindfulness is of neanderthal times where you would have a confrontation with a dangerous wild animal. It would cause an adrenaline rush and the mind would either tell you to fight or flee. There is no thought process here, just reflexes working in order to save you. In today’s world, there are no such dangers, but people have started to react to things as simple as criticism received on your code or occurrence of an incident. React is a state of high stress.
Response — When you act by giving a thought it is known as a response. Here you are utilising your mind hence the term mindful 😁. If you are thinking about how responding will help you in confrontation with a dangerous wild animal, the answer is it will only help you get eaten. But the times right now are not neanderthal and Response will help you a lot when people are criticising your code or system design. Response is a state when you think before you act.
Let’s connect React/Response to Incidents. Anyone who has seen enough incidents knows that many of them involve loud heated arguments and people are under stress (in a state of react) hence many incident reports have words like warfront, war room, war-like situation. How do we handle this stress? Accept the fact that there are going to be incidents and people involved in those incidents will undergo a lot of stress (used our first step Acceptance here😉 ). We need to provide them with all the tools necessary to ease out on the stress.
Organisations always look at these processes and tools as something which is to be used to find the issue/problem or something that would help the product launch. But never from the point of view on how it will help the people handling the incident to respond and not to react. How many organisations evaluate a tool on the basis of how it reduces the stress of people handling the incidents? Is this a major factor that is considered when you are finalising a tool or setting a process? The state of react is uneasy and unhealthy. We should also consider the stress factor when finalising a tool or setting a process in terms of incident handling. If you are at a position in an organisation where you decide the budgets of these tools please consider this factor as well spend more if it reduces stress. If you are in a position, where you decide priority or scope of implementing metrics and monitoring of a product launch please treat them with importance and give them a thorough thought. If you already are doing these things or will start doing it not because of the goals or KPI involved in incident management but actually thinking about stress that people will feel, congratulations you have practiced or will be practicing another great mindful value Empathy.
To summarise, Incidents are involved with high stress which force people to react instead of respond. We should accept this fact and bring a change in the culture where we consider these factors in setting process and priority. Please note that we are talking about reducing not eliminating.
Next, how do you look at solving problems when you know that every minute that you are thinking of a solution is costing business? The stress that is involved in finding the root cause is one thing, but the stress of fixing the issue is altogether another ball game especially when the solution or fix is not straightforward to implement. The next part how do you handle a stressful situation where there is chaos all around and you are not sure on what needs to be done, again with a catchy title “The Circles of Control and Chaos”
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