Thinking Space

A fantastic example of how the downstream process gaps could create the upstream chaos.

My office ID card got expired recently and I was asked to stay at reception until security team call my line manager to confirm if I was still employed. Though I had already applied for ID renewal and could show the approval email from my manager, security wasn’t convinced with that. They further advised about the new process of calling the line manager in case of ID card is expired or someone not carrying an ID card. When I raised my concerns that nobody knows about the new process, they explained that the new process has been initiated this week. In fact, I could see that lot of other colleagues  were also being stopped for the similar reasons.

I wasn’t quite happy with this since it was bringing a lot of hassle to anyone affected. I decided to enquire later with security team about what triggered this. They explained that they had a security breach recently when they let someone go inside who was earlier sacked from the organisation and though his ID card was de-activated but they could still see the individual as an active employee in the system. This was an important gap in the process which didn’t trigger an update to an important system used by security team to validate the identity of an individual.

This made security team extra cautious and hence created an upstream chaos.

When you see an upstream chaos try to find out the downstream system or process gap for it, most of the time you will find one.