You may have heard that we’ve reorganized our entire service delivery structure at Umbrella. Three teams, each managing a subset of our clients. After seven months, we’ve found our stride and things are going well.
The initial restructure brought some challenging moments
There were lots of meetings. We were all trying to work through our team dynamics and trying to make sure that our clients were getting the best service we could deliver. There were lots of questions about how the support process would work and how strictly the division between teams and team members would be enforced.
During one of those discussions, Curtis summed it up perfectly. “We are one company, with a common purpose and goals. We’re not 3 separate teams. We’re Onebrella.” That idea has become our new internal mantra.
Our staff loves the new distribution of our client workload. They’re able to work more closely with client networks and processes. It’s a result of the total number of clients each team serves being more manageable.
Our clients appreciate speaking to a smaller, more consistent group of engineers the majority of the time. Our teams are well defined but the environment is collaborative.
There are times when an issue or project requires the expertise of someone on another team. And that’s when the idea of Onebrella becomes crucial. We help each other regardless of team boundaries when it makes sense.
Andrew Horner, the Production Engineer on Team Bravo, is an expert in WiFi configurations and protocols. Curtis Bagnall, Production Engineer on Team Gotham, is very knowledgeable about Exchange email servers. Ben Hopkins, Production Owner for Team Watchmen, is the go-to guy for details about backup solutions.
The Healthcare analogy works well in this case. All of your basic healthcare is handled by your Primary Care Physician. But, when an issue arises that requires more expertise in a specific area, your PCP may refer you to a specialist. Umbrella support works the same way. We assign the best resource for the job at hand.
#Onebrella. Learn it. Know it. Live it.