Starbuck’s CEO Howard Schultz story, an 8 year break as CEO. Would Bill Gates follow the example?

Starbuck’s Howard Schultz releases his story on returning to Starbucks as CEO.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In 2000, Starbuck's founder and CEO Schultz (Pour Your Heart into It) stepped down from daily oversight of the company and assumed the role of chairman. Eight years later, in the midst of the recession and a period of decline unprecedented in the company's recent history, Schultz-feeling that the soul of his brand was at risk-returned to the CEO post. In this personal, suspenseful, and surprisingly open account, Schultz traces his own journey to help Starbucks reclaim its original customer-centric values and mission while aggressively innovating and embracing the changing landscape of technology. From the famous leaked memo that exposed his criticisms of Starbucks to new product strategies and rollouts, Schultz bares all about the painful yet often exhilarating steps he had to take to turn the company around. Peppered with stories from his childhood in tough Canarsie, N.Y., neighborhoods, his sequel to the founding of Starbucks is grittier, more gripping, and dramatic, and his voice is winning and authentic. This is a must-read for anyone interested in leadership, management, or the quest to connect a brand with the consumer. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

When I see this story and I start reading it (I have pre-ordered the Kindle edition, so it should show up on my Kindle in 2 hours at Midnight PT.), I wonder if Bill Gates would follow Howard Schultz’s example and return to Microsoft.  Many say Bill would never go back, but I am sure many said the same of Howard Schultz.

Howard felt so good about his accomplishments he wrote a book to tell the story.  Can you imagine the story Bill would tell after 8 years returning to Microsoft?  I bet there would be many people who left Microsoft who would return if Bill came back.

High Voltage Power Line Construction Video

Data Center discussions always lead to a power discussion.  But, usually the power lines are in place so rarely do people discuss high voltage power line construction.

Here are two time lapse construction videos that compress a lot of hard work putting high voltage power lines in place.

Mission Critical Patterns - Hospitals and Data Centers have resistant to change and collaboration

WSJ has an article on The Secret to Fighting Infections.  What got my attention is the following statement.

PETER PRONOVOST: The main barriers are the lack of collaboration and a culture that is resistant to change. There is also a lack of systems integration.

Hospitals and Data Centers have much in common from a building perspective.  Location is critical.  Power back-up is a given.  The buildings are very expensive, but what is in them is just as expensive.  They are a bunch of really smart people using the building, and with the smart people come egos that are not necessarily very collaborative.  Then you add on the risk avoidance.  In hospitals, malpractice/legal types of issues.  In Data Centers, those who make mistakes are many times the first to be fired as fingers of blame point.  Administrators who are looking to cut costs.

Here is the example of the hospital problems.

Nurses and pharmacists work for the hospital, which typically has clear lines of authority and procedures for dealing with failure to follow accepted practices. But physicians are often self-employed, have little training in teamwork and, perhaps like all of us, are often overconfident about the quality of care they provide, believing things will go right rather than wrong. Nurses are often reluctant to question them, and hospitals don't pressure physicians about teamwork for fear of jeopardizing the business they bring to the hospital.

Facility Ops and Sys admins are like the nurses and pharmacists with clear lines of authority and processes.  Developers and business unit are owners are like the Physicians.

The WSJ article focuses on safety and fighting infections in the hospital.

Japanese Nuclear Reactor’s inaccurate monitoring creates embarrassing statements

It is amazing how little time, effort and money is focused on monitoring systems, and to a large extent I have taken a break from focusing on monitoring solutions for data centers as I watch many companies try and sell monitoring to data center users.

One example of the problem of monitoring systems is the current Japan nuclear reactor disaster where engineers and politicians are making decisions and statements based on inaccurate readings. The Guardian joins hundreds of others who discuss the problem in Japan’s nuclear plans.

Japanese nuclear firm admits error on radiation reading

Tokyo Electric Power says initial reports of levels 10m times higher than normal in parts of No 2 reactor were inaccurate

• Justin McCurry in Tokyo
• The Guardian, Monday 28 March 2011

Opponents of nuclear power staged a protest in Tokyo on Sunday. Photograph: Itsuo Inouye/AP

Fresh doubt has been cast on the handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis after officials admitted wildly overstating levels of radiation, prompting an evacuation of the nuclear site damaged by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said initial reports of a level 10m times higher than normal in parts of the No 2 reactor were inaccurate, although it could not say by how much.

Tepco said at first that the worker who took the measurement, of a pool of water in the reactor's basement turbine building, had fled before taking a second reading. The discovery prompted another evacuation at the site, halting work to pump and store radioactive water that has built up in the turbine buildings of three of the six reactors.

Tepco later said the pool of water had been contaminated but the extremely high reading was a mistake. "The number is not credible," spokesman Takashi Kurita said. "We are very sorry."

However, later reports on Sunday showed contamination 100,000 times normal in water at reactor No 2, and 1,850 times normal in the nearby sea, the most alarming levels since the crisis began.

Unfortunately many times people don’t know how good their monitoring system are until there are disasters and the information from the monitoring system is used to make business critical decisions.

Back-up Power System installation takes out AlaskaAir fleet central computer system

I got up at 5:15a this morning to get my mom on a 6:50a flight from SEA to SJC.  Checking with my sister she said the flight was a bit late.  Luckily she was only late 20 minutes arriving in SJC as opposed to the next 4 + hours of cancelled flights when AlaskaAir's computer system was brought down during installation of a back-up power system blew a transformer.

This is why  I couldn't check flight status this morning.

Systemwide Central Computer Outage

A systemwide central computer outage has caused delays to flights throughout the Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air network. We apologize for inconvenience this is causing our customers.

I wonder what the cost impact is of cancelling 95 + flights.

DALLAS (AP) - Alaska Airlines and its Horizon Air affiliate canceled 95 flights Saturday because a computer system used for flight planning failed.

How many of the AlaskaAir IT operations guys have learned some new things about facility operations.  You'd think they could run the power system change  during the window of time when AlaskaAir isn't running fleet operations. (update)  The transformer failure happened at 3a this morning, so the maintenance was performed after hours, but a major transformer failure is not a quick repair.