Look out when the B-team is left in charge

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Last week, when Report Thousands of August bank holiday air passengers were stranded after a computer glitch, which the airline claimed was a “one in 15,000,000” event.

Hundreds of flights were affected after the UK air traffic control system suddenly shut down after receiving airline flight plans that its software could not handle.

This is the first time the software has successfully processed more than 15 million flight plans over the past five years, the report said.

However, considering how often this happens during the holidays, it’s hard to feel too relieved.

Out-of-control passport e-gates, crashed airline check-in systems and other IT issues have caused travel chaos on at least six occasions since 2017 during the UK’s peak holiday season. And this is just a flyer.check-in Eurostar train The Dover ferry can sometimes be a holiday ordeal.

Every unfortunate fiasco has its own reasons. Aging, complex and troublesome IT systems are a relentless source of pain, and not just during the holidays.

But one of the unspoken facts of working life is that many senior managers head to the beach during the holidays, leaving less experienced subordinates in charge.

Having been part of several B-teams in my previous role as deputy news editor, I know that having a second-in-command at the helm is not always ideal.

Representatives know that one of the tedious things about having to run the show yourself is that you don’t have a representative. Additionally, as a deputy rather than a boss, you don’t always have the authority to get important things done right away.

When everything goes well, none of this matters. But I still remember receiving a well-deserved criticism for downplaying an important story during a holiday period, a mistake that almost certainly could have been avoided if more bosses had been around.

On the bright side, no one died. This is often the case with newspaper malfunctions, but not in other workplaces.

For more than 20 years, researchers in multiple countries have found that patients admitted to hospitals on weekends are more likely to die than those admitted on weekdays.

This deadly “weekend effect” is widely thought to be caused by fewer hospital specialists working weekends, meaning more junior staff providing less-than-optimal care.

But some recent studies suggest the picture is more complicated.one large research A UK hospital survey published in 2021 confirmed that patients admitted at the weekend were indeed 16% more likely to die than those admitted during the week. The survey also found that there were about half as many experts available to everyone on Sunday as on Wednesday.

But it failed to prove a clear link between the number of experts and mortality. In fact, weekend hospital care is just as good, if not slightly better. One clear difference was that patients admitted on weekends were sicker than those admitted on weekdays.

This is worth remembering if you happen to join Team B. In fact, being a stand-in can give you a chance to shine or outshine the person you’re replacing.

In fact, as many leaders discovered during the chaotic withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan, the fate of the person who fills the gap can be much better than that of the boss who took a leave at the wrong time.

When the Taliban occupied Kabul in mid-August 2021, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and the top civil servant at the Foreign Office Philip Barton were all there Take a vacation.

As Afghanistan descends into chaos, Raab faces calls to resign. Patton later said he regretted not returning sooner.

“I think I should make myself more visible to those of us working on the crisis,” he told a reporter. parliamentary inquiry. “They should have seen my obvious involvement.”

Ultimately, the lesson here is simple. The B team should always be as capable and well-resourced as possible, and some people will be more skilled than expected. But A-list teams need to know that sometimes they still need to get off the beach and back to the office right away.

pilita.clark@ft.com

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