Operations story: Inspiration for operationalizing delivery (in real sense!) - 05/24

On October 28th, 2015, my wife was admitted to the hospital for her first delivery. However, due to a last-minute her relative driven change in hospitals (a one-hour drive from our home), the situation became more complicated. After the baby was born, next day the baby was unnecessarily transferred to the neonatal ICU in another hospital.

During this challenging time, I found myself at the center of everything—providing meals, handling daily hospitalization needs, and ensuring a smooth process. 

Learning from this experience, we decided to take a different approach during our second delivery. We eliminated the factors that had caused the last-minute hospital change, opting for a hospital closer to home with integrated neonatal care. On June 30, 2021, my wife was admitted for second delivery at 8 am. Thanks to our operationalized approach, everything ran smoothly without depending solely on me to the extent that I could work from the hospital room on that day. 

Since, at work, I faced a different challenge. On the same day, June 30, Quarter-end Incentive Compensation (IC) processing was underway, I and only a new associate were on the project. He was struggling with the excel workbook. Hence, I spent around an hour on a call with the associate from the hospital room, clarifying business rules to ensure the IC workbook could be processed efficiently.

Reflecting on both experiences, I wondered: If we could make real-life delivery independent of my direct involvement, why not apply the same principle to IC processing? 

Inspired by this thought, we operationalized the IC process by creating a Tableau dashboard.

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