Not so at McCarran, where the process bar has been set high by airport director Randall Walker. With an accounting and IT background, he's hell-bent on everyone in IT knowing that good execution and a focus on business objectives are what matter. Technology is a priority. "We found that when we had common use, we got more 'turns' out of that gate," he says. "The only way we could figure out how to do that is through technology."
Of course, the technology to perform these vital functions simply has to work, no excuses. There's plenty of evidence that technology at McCarran is well-planned, not implemented willy-nilly. There is documentation for just about everything, and there are works-in-progress documented in almost everyone's office.
Walker does acknowledge that there's no such thing as 100 percent uptime, which again brings up the Slammer worm. "How do you, as an IT guy, go up to your boss and say, 'Well, they did send us the fix, but I just never had time to install it'? The guy is sitting there calculating how much money they lost," Walker says. "As an IT guy, that's a hard discussion to have with your boss. I expect my guys to stay on top of it."
McCarran's systems, according to Bourgon, easily boast an uptime of 99.995 percent. So what's the control mechanism to ensure that staffers, not just equipment, continue to deliver? Are there pages and pages of standard operating procedures, or is it cultural?
Any organizational behavior textbook will tell you that culture is one of the most effective control mechanisms, and Walker confirms that. However, fostering a culture of teamwork is no easy task. The key?
