Some people think they can't impact revenue because they aren't in sales, but every department has an impact on revenue albeit indirectly at times. I've seen stats say the cost to get a new customer is 6-7 times more than keeping one. I agree, in fact in my case it's even more, but I digress...

I recently broke my lawn mower. It was 8 years old and i had gotten my money out of it. It was the cheapest one they sold and the rope finally broke. I tried to fix it but needed to get the lawn mowed since i had company coming over and wanted the place to look good. So after spending an hour trying to repair it I decided to replace it.

I ran to the local walmart and bought the next model up. I had always used Briggs and Stratton engines and this one was another one. I wanted something with adjustable wheels, so i splurged. I got it home, read the directions which were super simple, filled the oil, put it some fresh gas and pulled the handle. And pulled, and pulled and pulled. Then swore for a bit and pulled, pulled and pulled some more. 

After 45  minutes i realized it wasn't going to start so i spent a few minutes trying to get my old one working and finally gave up and realized my friends would just have to see my month long uncut grass.

The next weekend I brought it back, which was another whole story, but one for another day.

I went to Home Depot which was right next door since the walmart folks had me so mad and bought a different brand but still Briggs and Stratton engine. This one got home, got assembled and I pulled and pulled and pulled. After about 20 times it sputtered and I figured that it was the first time it probably just needed to get the fuel to the engine. It finally started and died after 5 seconds. 

I pulled, and pulled and pulled and it started and ran for 5 seconds. Pull, pull, pull, and die...

After having the second Briggs and stratton engine not work even once, i returned this too. This time i bought a Honda. Got it home first pull it started and mowed the entire lawn. I never plan to buy another Briggs and Stratton engine anything again. 

Let's look at this though. I'm no mechanic, but i I had to guess the first one had a broke wire or something electrical. The cost of the broken part was probably under $5. The second was definitely carburetor. Those go for probably $8. So for $13 Briggs lost a customer. 

Now if anyone from Briggs and Stratton is reading this and wondering how they can win me back I'll tell you.

1. Explain what went wrong with the quality process, and the steps you have gone through to ensure this is improved. 

2. Deliver me one and show me it working. The 2 stores I bought them from don't have any working, just boxed. Show me the one I want to buy working

3. Pay me back for the aggravation. I spent 1.5 hours, unboxing, assembling, testing, repacking the bad mowers. I spent 3 hours driving them around the lovely state of Maine. I  drove 90 miles at .51 cents a mile that's around $45, plus another 3 hours. I'll be nice and only charge minimum wage, though i make more than that . So 4.5 hours at $7.5 is $33.75 for a total of $78.75

So to lose a customer cost $8, to gain one back will cost $80..

Yahoos new rule is a test of "Engagelement"

Engagelement is the theory that  company culture and employee engagement is like quantum entanglement. When employees work closely and become used to working well together they retain this state even when separated by many miles.

OK it's not a real theory, well more accurately I just made it up, so its not a well known theory...

If you missed the big debate, the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, sent out a memo saying all working from home will stop in June. Not completely unexpectedly the world blew up and everyone has been talking about this for the last 2 weeks.

Sanity is starting to come back and most people realize that this was not a publicity stunt done to get Yahoo's name in the press. Though it did get a lot of press out of it.

It was not done because Marissa wants people to quit, though it sounds like at least some of the people that worked form home, did half of that. They were home, but not always working. I'm sure the will decide now is a good time to quit, they will step it up and become good employees again, or they will get fired once someone figures out they aren't valuable.

It was not done because telecommuting doesn't work. Clearly  for many functions an office at corporate us not a requirement and most of us work remotely at least part of the time. Who hasn't checked their email at night before going to bed or on a weekend when watching a game?

It was done because Yahoo is in turnaround mode and that means quite simply they have a lot of hard work to do and need everyone engaged.

Which of course is what got me thinking about engaglement. If you just don't believe in Quantum Physics you can also think of this as a UPS that occasionally needs to get recharged. Employees are kind of like that.

Employees that never come into the office become dis-engaged. They just tend to lose energy or excitement. Not all the time before you all jump on and call me an idiot, it's just hard to stay excited about the company and to fully understand what's going on if you aren't there on a regular basis. That's why most companies have regular company meetings.

Now I'm not saying that I think it is bad for people to work from home if they are sick, or have an appointment in the morning, or there is a blizzard, but when you are trying to turn around a company that is struggling you need people that want to work hard and do what is right for the company.

More tips for CIO's

A few years ago I wrote a piece for InfoWorld called "The 30 skills every IT person should know". Well it's been a while and I thought I'd update it and make it tips for CIO's. Frankly having been to a lot of CIO events, we all seem to have the same problems, so here is what I think we need to do to get better.

1. Over communicate. I can't think of any exceptions, as an industry IT stinks at communicating. Our previous CEO used to say you need to tell people 150 times before they remember. I think he was exaggerating, but too many times we assume since we emailed out an announcement for a new system to the company, that suddenly everyone is aware of and fully using it. They aren't. Let's not kid ourselves, maybe 25% of the people even read the emails. If you announce it at an all hands event, you might get 30% that remember. We need to get a lot better at this. All of us....

2. Live the real experience. I know as the CIO it's real easy to get the latest toys. Heck as an IT Director I get a lot of cool toys too. Unfortunately we also need to realize what our users are actually using. I used to make a point of always having one of the slowest laptops in the company. Any time someone would complain about an application being too slow on their machine, they would look at mine, and apologize. It's really easy to get so wrapped up in the latest and greatest gadget that we lose touch with our users. Once we do, we become targets.

3. "Undercover CIO" for a day. The CIO, to those that have never been a CIO, seems to have the best job in the world. Nothing gives you an appreciation for the other guy as actually seeing what it is like. Take a day and work the helpdesk, or test code, or fix a PC, or troubleshoot the network. Unless you are a big IT shop, the employees will probably recognize you and that's OK. You can try to wear a fake mustache, but those never fool anyone. The goal is to really see what it is like. If it's reasonable, bring one of your developers, administrators or help desk staff along with you on one of your days. If spending 4 hours in a budget review meeting doesn't get you some sympathy, nothing will.

4. Walk a mile in another C-levels shoes. It's real easy to point out all the things the other executives are doing wrong, especially if you don't really understand what it is they do. Spend enough time with them to really understand what it is they do and what problems them have in their area. Not only will you get kudo's for listening, you very likely will find ways to help them and gain a supporter as well.

5. Solicit feedback. One of the hardest things in the world is to ask people what you are doing well and not doing well, and then listen to them tell you all the things you're doing wrong. I've learned my tolerance for constructive feedback is ten negative comments. After that I have to really concentrate on biting my tongue and not getting defensive. But, once you get all of that out on the table, you can then work together as a team to resolve, or at least understand why things are the way they are. Generally though we try to hide our flaws behind metrics and spin the number to make us look better, but let's cut to the chase, if you stink, people know it, no matter what the chart says.

Now I can't say if you do these ten things (the other five are here ) you will be a rockstar CIO or that you will never get fired but I can say it will probably make you a better CIO if you do follow these steps.

If not feel free to let me know and I'll gladly refund any money you paid to read this.

Pre-data center move tips

We are getting ready to move our data enter yet again. This will be the fourth time we move this particular one so we are getting pretty good at it. It's funny how much goes into one of these that people just don't realize.

A few examples...

1. Every connection needs to be documented. If not you will not know where to plug it in once you arrive at the new data center.

2. Every server location must be documented both where it is currently and where it is going. By location I mean the cabinet and "U location". A typical cabinet has 42 U locations, some servers take 1U some can take 20U. There is a big difference...

3. Then you need to have a server move document that shows where the server came from and goes to, so that it goes on the right pallet. The right pallet is the one that matches the "go to" cabinet. It makes it quicker putting them back in.

4. All the cables at the new location need to be labelled and ideally color coded. It's much easier to find the one cable out of 300 that you need, if only ten of them are red...

5. Print out the labels ahead of time but don't put them on the cables. Otherwise you will spend too much time trying to find the next cable...

6. Unbag and untie all of the cables ahead of time too. It may not sound like much but when you have 1000 cables, even that 30 seconds per cable adds up. In this case to around 6 hours of time...

7. You can't have more than three people working in a cabinet, one in the front and one in the back, maybe one handing the cables. You also need to leave a space in the cabinets you are working on or people will just be in the way....

8. Have a separate test team and troubleshoot team, if possible. After working until Midnight on Friday taking stuff out, and then working 16 hours on Saturday putting them back in, you will be too tired to actually be that effective...

9. Have a priority list, just in cast you don't get to finish everything on time you can at least make sure the most important systems are available as quickly as you can.

10. After you are done, celebrate then figure out what you could have done better. Number 5 is a great example of learning from something that didn't quite go as good as we expected. Everyone likes to think they will only do this once, but never say never.

I'm sure once we are done I'll have some post move tips too, so stay tuned.

Some timing numbers we use...
Setting up a new cabinet (moving it in place, securing it etc) takes 30 minutes.
Racking (or unracking) a server takes 10 minutes
Plugging in one network cable is 5 minutes
Power cables are 2 minutes.

The right tool for the job - netflow

It's been a few weeks since I last posted. With the holidays, moving our corporate headquarters (and 500 people) it's been busy. Plus I didn't have anything insightful to add and I don't want to be one of those folks that feels the need to blog just to blog.

Then as Ray Barone, on "Everybody Loves Raymond" said, "sometimes material presents itself" This past week material presented itself...

In Maine having a "plow truck" is pretty much a requirement. For those not from the area a plow truck is usually an old truck, mostly rusted out that isn't safe to drive on the road with a plow on the front, brakes are optional My plow truck's power steering stopped working along with the heater so I spent a few days working on it.

I hate working on vehicles because, well, I have no idea what I'm doing.... But with the help of the internet I searched around and found out my power steering was leaking at a fitting going to the power steering gear box. It looked like an easy fix to change it so I disconnected the hose and broke the fitting in the process.

Unfortunately I couldn;t get the now broken fitting out. It was too rusted and the wrenches and sockets I had just kept trying to strip the head off and ruin the fitting. I spent all of day 1 trying to heat the fitting, and spraying it with "Liquid Wrench" to try and get it out. Finally when it got too dark and cold to work I went back online and searched for "rusted fitting removal"

Sure enough there were a lot of people with the same problem and it turns out something called an impact wrench seems to be the tool of choice. It turns out I have an impact wrench and after 30 minutes of dragging out the hoses, compressors and fittings I used that to remove the fitting in about 45 seconds. It took about 2 more minutes to put the new fitting in, connect the hose and that problem was fixed.

Having the right tool, and knowing it is the right tool is key. Clearly I had the right tool but didn't know it because I had never used it. I could tell because it was still in the plastic.

Many IT administrators have plenty of tools that they have forgotten about. One of the most powerful ones is netflow. Netflow lets you see every conversation on the network, but is very rarely used. It takes a high end switch to be able to do "full netflow" without impacting performance. I think Enterasys switches are one of the few, if not the only ones, that can do this.If you have it though it becomes one of the tools you use very frequently.

If you aren't familiar with it, check out some of the posts and uses for it here.

People helping people

One of my beliefs is that people like helping people. I know it's hard to believe that some times when you watch the news, or some one cuts you off on the highway but I still feel that way.

Sure the driver that cut you off may have not been helping you, but he or she could have been bringing a kidney to the hospital and needs to get there quickly, or maybe they are a volunteer rescue worker and forgot to put on their light. I don't know, but I still think just because they aren't helping you at that time, doesn't mean they aren't helping someone.

Why is this even remotely important? Well one of the main reasons social network and collaboration works is because people like helping people. Many times simply posting a question will yield dozens of results from knowledgeable people willing to share their advice.

Smart companies are already leveraging this by creating community groups. Many times this can help reduce support calls (and money spent answering those calls). Even more importantly it helps build more engaged and loyal customers.

Tools like Salesforce.com's Chatter, Yammer, Sharepoint and a host of other free tools are available to help build these community frameworks. People are willing to help. It will take time to build a vibrant community but in the future this will be "table stakes" as customers become more used to working with social businesses. Those businesses that aren't social will decline as the innovators grow.

Asus Zenbook and Galaxy SIII

I recently upgraded my HTC evo 3d from Sprint to a GS3 from Verizon. The same week I upgraded my Dell E4300 to an Asus Zenbook Prime. After a few weeks here's my thoughts on them...

Samsung Galaxy S3

The GS3 is fast and Verizon coverage rocks. I get 4g coverage in Maine which I never would have expected I would see in 2013 let alone now. When it connects to 4G it is super fast. Even 3g speeds seem like much better coverage than Sprint. The display is awesome.

It stinks having to switch phones. I sort of assumed that since I used google play at least the apps I had downloaded would have magically showed up. They didn't and I spent the first day getting them all again and organizing the icons so I could find them. It was what I was used to but I was expecting better.

The display is great, but breaks super easy. I know it is supposed to be Gorilla Glass, but I think mine was Bunny Glass or something. Literally it slipped out of my hands and fell and cracked the glass. Entirely my fault but a 12-18" drop seems like it should not have ruined a $600 phone.

The even worse news is the repair is a $250 repair. I have insurance but it still is going to be $100 out of pocket. So far I've lived with it. I figure if I broke it in 2 weeks with normal use, I can't afford to repair it every time it breaks. I mean that's $50 a week.. It sure seems like a glass replacement is more like a $20 repair. If anyone knows any tricks I'd  love to hear them.

Lately my phone has been rebooting. Hopefully this won't be a regular occurrence

Asus Zenbook Prime

The zenbook is super fast. It's light and the display again is really good.

Unfortunately the display is too good. The resolution is so good that I can't see it. I really need to drop it down to something that makes every thing bigger, or admit I need progressive lenses. I'll probably do the resolution thing....

I hate the touch pad. It seems way to sensitive when I'm typing and frequently I look at the screen and find the cursor moved on me and I'm garbling paragraphs. So far it has happened twice in this post. That really pisses me off, but worse when I am trying to use the touch pad it doesn't seem sensitive enough. To be fair, I've never liked them and disabled it on my Dell too and used the pointing stick. The Zenbook doesn't have that so I need to use an external mouse which stinks when I'm in a lazyboy recliner....

I hate the face that I need to hit a function key to get page up or down to work as well as the volume. Speaking of volume the sound is much better than the Dell speakers were.

It's a super light laptop but the downfall is I need a dongle for the external VGA monitor and it doesn't have a DVD or ethernet port either. They shipped the machine with a USB ethernet port, but it was a 10/100Mbs connection. I always use wireless so not a big deal, but really 10/100????

I know I'm going to lose or forget the vga dongle. I haven't yet, but I will.

I miss the 3 power supplies I had with my Dell. I only have one with the Asus. I'll forget that one day and need to get another one. Not exactly an Asus issue, just annoys me. :)

Generally I love them both, but like anything it takes some getting used to. I'm still getting used to some things...