Children in your Data Center, Spot the TOT

MSNBC republished a BusinessWeek article that brings up a challenge almost all of us have run into.

How to parent your terrible toddler of a boss

Five signs you have a Terrible Office Tyrant and ways to manage up

By Lynn Taylor

updated 4:47 a.m. PT, Fri., Aug 28, 2009

If you've been hitting the snooze button lately on weekday mornings instead of hitting the shower — or find yourself taking the long way around to avoid passing by the corner office, you may just be working for a TOT, that is, a "Terrible Office Tyrant."

TOTs are bosses who act strikingly similar to children, oftentimes toddlers in their Terrible Twos. Why does this happen? Because we're all human, and behind the professional facade are grown kids who act out and can't moderate their power. Unfortunately, at some point from 9 to 5, they just cannot allow the child within to stay there. So in the workplace, these tykes ruin your day and wreak havoc on office productivity.

And, it is not just you who don’t like the TOTs. CEOs as well see the problems.

CEOs are not particularly fond of TOTs either. Childish managers sap productivity and hurt the bottom line. I advise CEOs to TOT-proof their company by making it safe for success — so that employees can make mistakes, communicate, and innovate. Where TOTs lurk, so does turnover, absenteeism, loss of customers, poor employee recruitment and retention, and profit erosion.

The first step is spot the TOT, and commit to being TOT-free.

The first step is spotting a TOT. At first glance, your boss's childish behaviors can be mistaken for a sporadic outburst. But after a while, you'll observe a pattern. Fortunately, by recognizing the parallel between out-of-control kids and bosses, you'll discover that the same basic techniques often work effectively for both.

Conversely, a firm dedicated to being "TOT-free" is successful, progressive, worth investing in and working for, as evidenced by countless lists of desirable, profitable places to work and most admired companies.

Next is what do you do?  There are five different scenarios –Tantrums, Demanding, Needy, Stubborn, and Distracted. The last one can be the most frustrating.

Distracted
You steer clear of the boss's door because she requested privacy as she puts the finishing touches on her report. Three hours later you enter her office and not only has she neglected her work, but she is crafting the world's longest paper clip chain. TOTs like this suffer from BADD — Boss Attention Deficit Disorder. They're only interested in what seems important at any given moment in time and have trouble paying attention to you.

The author summarizes

There's a good chance you've encountered more than one TOT in you career. Who knows, maybe you even act like one yourself on occasion. Just remember, to "TOT is human," and anyone can fall prey to it. Everyone can play a role in humanizing the workplace with greater sensitivity to what's really behind that facade.

Can you spot the TOT in your data center project?  I bet you found multiple TOTs, and you sit with your peers wondering why these people can’t act like adults.

The best data centers I’ve seen have commitments to be TOT-free. 

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eBay’s Top 5 Data Center Practices, Olivier Sanche Shares Ideas

eBay’s Olivier Sanche is a name recognized in the Mac community and data center industry with the announcement he will be joining Apple.

Apple's Going Greener with New Hire

Posted 08/13/2009 at 11:59:29am | by Danny Estrada

Apple just hired Oliver Sanche, eBay's former Senior Director of Data Centers Services and Stategies. Sanche also happens to be the leading expert on the greening of cloud computing facilities. Sanche was assisting eBay in its quest to become carbon neutral since 2007. His latest contribution to providing a world for your future Mac-using offspring, has been the overseeing of eBay's newest data-center, which will reach the second highest LEED standards when it goes live in 2010.

Now Apple is looking to clean up their footprint on our planet by using Sanche's services in overseeing their planned billion dollar, 500,000-square-foot facility in North Carolina that will serve as Apple's primary East Coast data center. Sanche has helped to combine and conserve eBay's energy uses by utilizing a combination of solar energy, facilities management, and the adoption of a high-quality carbon-offset program.

Here is a recent post that has eBay sharing its top 5 data center ideas to be green.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

eBay's Sustainable Data Center

Green is part of eBay’s DNA
Sustainability at eBay is a strong part of its culture. Its basic business model is all about sustainability, since it encourages reuse by establishing markets for used products. Continuing the sustainability theme in its operations, both grass roots employee initiatives and broader corporate programs have been launched. Some of these programs include:

I like the list because it is shorter than most who share ten ideas, and starts with a fundamental of research.

Here are the top two, for the remaining three you can go to the full post.

eBay’s Olivier Sanche “Top 5” to enhance Data Center sustainability
1) Research best practices.
There are many excellent resources available including Climate Savers, Green Grid, and Data Center Pulse. Such resources can help a business determine which activities provide the biggest improvements, learn how to implement current best practices, understand trends to plan accordingly, and connect with other data center professionals interested in sustainability.

#2 is an end to end view few talk about as they themselves are in silos.


2) Baseline current energy costs, apply appropriate metrics and break-down silos.


If not already part of the data center budget, DC energy costs should be moved to the DC budget to provide the necessary visibility to manage. To improve energy utilization, DC’s usually focus on making the plant and equipment more efficient, but it is just as important to understand how the equipment is used. To illustrate his point, Olivier shared an analogy. When comparing a Hummer and a Prius when looking at mpg, the Prius wins. But if the Hummer is carrying eight people and the Prius is only carrying one person, the person-miles per gallon makes the Hummer more efficient. To understand an analogous person-miles per gallon at the data center, an important metric is “computing per watt”.


It is necessary to partner with application delivery, engineering, architecture and operations to enhance the computing per watt metric. According to Olivier, “a major problem is that a DC is typically siloed from other parts of the organization.” Olivier made the effort to seek out his partners to share the data on energy use and then work together across the organization to find creative solutions. Without data and metrics, each department will likely focus on their activities and sub-optimize to the determent of the overall goal of sustainability. Armed with the end-to-end view, increasing utilization became a critical goal. The next step was to fine-tune applications, middleware, network, o/s to work better together to perform a function or service or eliminate unneeded code to further drive down energy use. Combining energy reduction for both the equipment and services using the equipment is comparable to using two Prius’s to transport eight passengers and abandoning the Hummer altogether.

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Fund your Virtualization Project with Utilities' Energy Efficiency Incentives

VMware has a page useful for looking for Energy Efficiency incentives from Utilities.  This list is good to use even if you don’t use VMware.

Help Pay for Virtualization with Energy Efficiency Incentives

Virtualization is a proven solution for increasing energy efficiency, and many major utility providers now offer financial incentives for virtualization projects that result in the reduction of physical servers in the datacenter. By participating in these incentive programs, you can achieve even greater financial savings with VMware virtualization solutions while significantly reducing the carbon footprint of your IT infrastructure

Several major utility providers in the United States and Canada currently offer such incentives, including:

Many other utility companies are investigating similar programs; contact your local utility provider for more information.

Energy efficiency incentives are typically paid following the completion of a qualifying server consolidation project. These incentives cover direct energy savings (cooling costs are excluded) and can result in incentives as high as $400 per server..

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Modeling and Monitoring Top Mistake, Waiting for Risk to Eliminating

I recently had the chance to watch a situation where a person was presented with a strategic decision.  I was presented the same situation.  My decision was made in seconds, deciding what needs to be achieved, how priorities need to be shifted, the overall effects are thought of in minutes. There are unknowns, resolve them, ignore others, but keep moving.

The other person spent the first 24 hours wanting more information; the follow on 24 hours evaluating the various alternatives.  Then finally after 72 hours, deciding on action, and within 12 hours changed their mind again.  As much time as the person spent, collecting more information, analyzing the situation, they still could not make a decision.  And, anything they did now was a waste.  They missed the opportunity.

I was in a conf call last night (sunday) where a group of us were discussing modeling, and it reminded me of how the group of us saw the opportunity and knew we needed to move fast.  In my above example, we made decisions and started moving.  The other way which we didn’t have present in the meeting is “I need more information before I can make a decision. Let’s reduce the risk.”

I haven’t blogged much over the last week as I have been dealing the with crisis situation I mention in the first paragraph, but I’ll get back to blogging as soon I resolve the situation.

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Why Model? Increase Trust in The System

I”ve just had a day of intense modeling conversation followed up the next day a lunch meeting with an old friend who just left Microsoft.  We worked together at Apple, and ran into other during years at Microsoft.  Coincidentally, we saw each other a week after he left while he was on a charity holiday run.  He left Microsoft after 14 years and I did too. 

Given his recent departure and process of decompressing from 14 years at Microsoft I asked if he had reached an epiphany.  He hadn’t yet, but I did.

There are many reasons why you want to create abstract models of complex systems.

Scientific modelling

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Example of scientific modelling. A schematic of chemical and transport processes related to atmospheric composition

Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, graphical and or mathematical models. Science offers a growing collection of methods, techniques and theory about all kinds of specialized scientific modelling.

Modeling is an essential and inseparable part of all scientific activity, and many scientific disciplines have their own ideas about specific types of modeling. There is little general theory about scientific modeling, offered by the philosophy of science, systems theory, and new fields like knowledge visualization.

And, I have had fun discussing models with executives like Thetus’s Danielle Forsyth and Skanska’s Jakob Carnemark.  We all see the benefit, but how do you get others to understand why modeling.

Modeling enables Trust of a technical solution.

For a trustful and friendly use of technology, the user must be able to have a clear mental model of its use and functioning (way of working), being it partial, superficial and even wrong, but at the same time sufficient for having precise expectations and for knowing how and what to do, i.e. sufficient for reducing uncertainty and perceiving safety and reliability.

So, why model the data center? It increases trust in the data center system including its users. Higher trusts promotes knowledge sharing.

It is clear how trust is a precondition for knowledge sharing and a result of it or, more precisely, that trust is a mediator, a catalyst of the process: it is a mental and interpersonal (cognitive, dispositional, and relational) precise condition for the two crucial steps in the organisational flow of knowledge.

The relationship between trust and knowledge sharing is circular: in order to trust Y, X must either have information about Y, helping him to evaluate Y's trustworthiness, or having knowledge in common with him that encourages the establishment of a trust relationship so as values sharing; on the other hand, in order to share knowledge, it is necessary to have a trust relation or atmosphere.

While caring of making knowledge capital explicit and circulating, an organisation should care of what are the beliefs of the actors about the knowledge itself, about the organisation values, authority, infrastructure, and about each-others, and what they expect and feel on the basis of such beliefs. In knowledge management organisations should monitor and build the right expectations in their members. Knowledge management entails a cognitive, affective, and structural "trust management" in organisations.

I’ve always done business assuming trust of the other party to create partnerships. I hadn’t thought about it as a separate property that indicates the health of the a system.  Modeling if used right can increase trust of the modeling systems.

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