My Hardest Team Conflict

During my time at IBM as a Database Consultant, I worked for a major European insurance client. I was leading a team of 4. The client was very demanding with the deliverables and the timeframe that most of the time the members of the team had to spend extra hours to fulfill the commitment. The applications were ‘mission critical’ and hence production issues were very common, hence overnight issue resolution was frequent. Generally, the team was drained out – working overnight to resolve a production issue, then reporting at office in the morning. We hardly got few hours of sleep.

After repeatedly requesting the management about the lack of employees to support the account, there was no response. Unable to handle the pressure, two of the senior members of the team resigned at the same time. It was a critical situation. My manager promised to recruit replacement resources as soon as possible so that there is sufficient time to train the new recruits before the notice period of 3 months. However, even after 1.5 months, my manager did not give any updates. When I followed up with him, he said he will get an update soon. I was feeling nervous, as it would be quite impossible to continue functioning once the two senior members leave after their notice period. After a week again, I tried setting up a meeting with my manager. He declined. Same happened the next week. This time I had to act. I sent an email to my Second Line Manager copying my manager telling him about our situation. It turned out that my manager had just raised the request for new recruitment the previous week and by then IBM had frozen all its hiring cycles. Hence, till the next 3 months we cannot have any recruitment process.

I confronted my manager as to what his plans were. He had no clue. On the other side the clients were getting impatient as we did not provide the replacement employees yet. The account being critical, it takes at least a month for knowledge transition and the clients were naturally upset. At this point, I had an idea. I approached my colleagues who were on notice period and requested them if they would consider their resignation for a salary hike. Although initially hesitant, one of them agreed based on my interpersonal relationship with him and if offered a considerable hike. I took the proposal to my manager. As usual, he disagreed. I saw no option than to say, that I will be forced to resign too if he doesn’t consider the proposal. This persuaded him to think that this proposal was his only way to continue supporting the major client. He finally took up the proposal with the higher management and one of my colleagues stayed back. Since my colleague got a considerable retention bonus and hike, he was willing to put in more efforts till we could hire another person to replace the person who left.