How was the new program received? It was a bit of a shock across the company. Over time, a lot of accountability had been given to committees. They can't be accountable. We dissolved most of the committees.

In the past, a lot of this stuff that was creating problems wasn't even visible at the senior level unless it got so bad that the clients started calling the CEO. We now have a reporting system that tracks mean time between failures of all the applications.

When we first turned it on, it was scary, [but] my message [to employees] was, "We have to fix this together. The only thing that will get you in trouble is covering things up."

Give an example of a problem you have uncovered with the program. When we first started the reliability process, I would meet with my direct reports and ask about the status of operations. They would say, "We are green" [meaning all was going well]. I would walk from my office to the videoconference facility [to find] there was stuff going wrong all over the place.

[The reliability program] brings the people actually doing the work in with the senior executives of the company to talk about what happened. There is no spin control. It is live. The people who really helped us in the beginning -- who stepped up and were under fire -- they are some of the best managers we have today.