December 31st, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 4 Comments »
Recently I came across a great bit of prose, written by Max Ehrmann. Just to be safe on copyright issues (thank you, David), I’ve linked to a site that has the piece in its entirety.
Hope you enjoy.
December 31st, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 2 Comments »
Enjoy one extra second of 2008!
December 17th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 9 Comments »
Because we are a Church, we are considerably more cost conscious than a typical enterprise would be. In an effort to save power, cooling & hardware costs in our data center, we’ve begun implementing virtualization. We’ve been using virtualization for quite some time with our AIX servers, but we’ve now begun to virtualize Windows and Linux boxes.
Most of you know what virtualization is, but for those who don’t, I’ll try to explain.
<virtualization_explanation>
In the past, when a team needed a server in the data center, we would purchase them their own server. Their application might use, on average, 10% of the capabilities of that server. Or less. It was a waste, not just for our shop, but for the entire industry. A potential, but not always viable, solution was to load multiple solutions onto one box, but those solutions shared the application server and operating system and consequently could interfere with each other by crashing the operating system or the application server and/or just utilizing too much of the computer’s brain (CPU).
Virtualization allows us to load multiple instances of an operating system on a single box. So on one machine, we could load several solutions, each with its own instance of the application server (Websphere) and the operating system (typically Linux). So if one solution crashes its instance of the OS, the other solution is just fine because it’s running on top of its own instance of the OS.
And because each solution was previously only using around 10% of the total resources of the server, you can run, say, 5 solutions on one server and still only use around 50% of the server’s resources. You just cut your power, cooling and hardware costs by roughly 80% (minus a little overhead for the virtualization technology itself).
Pretty amazing.
</virtualization_explanation>
We have seen significant, and maybe even extraordinary, savings on our “per server” costs as a result of virtualization.
The unintended consequence has been “server sprawl.” The ease, speed and extremely low cost of creating a new server (because it is virtual) has increased the demand for servers. Without great governance and management tools, this is becoming a problem for most enterprises.
How are you dealing with “server sprawl” in your shops?
December 13th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 10 Comments »
Last week at the Research Board, I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Peter Tippett, a security guru who bucks common risk management wisdom and has made an enemy of many security folks who find his focus on being “practical” naive. He was both delightfully insightful and hilarious.
He offered many tidbits of wisdom.
For example, he talked about endpoint protection. Security best practices dictate that laptops, particularly ones carried by executives or other folks who might be carrying sensitive data, be encrypted with heavy duty encryption stuff. Tippett argues that this practice is silly.
In order for something bad to happen, ALL of the following must be true:
What is the likelihood that even the first three of these things might happen, let alone the last two?
A good security professional will know the potential attacks and best defenses. An excellent security professional will temper the desire to “continually batten down the hatches” by considering the probability of successful attacks and planning accordingly.
Peter was refreshing and fun.
October 4th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 5 Comments »
Many are following LDS General Conference on Twitter using the #LDSCONF keyword.
October 4th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 17 Comments »
We’re broadcasting General Conference online this weekend, as we have in the past. There are English, Portuguese, Spanish, and American Sign Language versions.
We’re using encoders from a Utah company, Move Networks, to stream the video. In the future we will stream additional languages.
The quality is good enough to watch on a big screen if you have a way to hook your computer up to a TV or a projector.
Enjoy!
September 30th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 9 Comments »
Any executive (CIO, CEO, business owner, whatever) will tell you that one of the keys to success is hiring great managers. In a technology group (or company) the people chosen to manage engineers are usually … the best engineers.
Do great engineers make great managers? Not without hard work.
You’ve heard the story: Maestro finishes a performance and is approached by a member of the audience. “I would give my life to play like that.” Maestro pauses. “I did.”
Most worthwhile pursuits require desire, effort, practice, and focus. And time.
Leadership is no different. You can help by providing opportunities for leaders and potential leaders to study the craft. Here are three ideas:
These are intuitive suggestions, but I’m surprised at how many companies I talk to which either a) don’t pay attention to developing leaders or b) don’t treat these opportunities seriously.
August 24th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 6 Comments »
A year or so ago we did some “tech talks” in California, Washington and Utah where we got together with techies to discuss technology at the Church. We’ll be doing this online this week. This one is for people interested in technology and how the Church uses it.
More information here.
August 23rd, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 12 Comments »
Six months or so ago I heard about a web site called PhotoSynth, a tool that started in Microsoft Research Labs. You can upload pictures of a building or city block or object or whatever into PhotoSynth and it will stitch them together into a 3d view.
PhotoSynth is now live. It has some limitations, like the inability to add pictures to someone else’s Synth, but you can just imagine the potential!
I downloaded a bunch of pictures of the SL temple from Flickr and created a PhotoSynth called “Mormon Temple (SLC).” It was able to automatically stitch together about 11 percent of them, although all from the same side.
Would love to see someone put enough pictures into a Synth to create a full 3d view of one of the temples!
Kudos to Microsoft for a clever idea!
July 14th, 2008 | By Joel Dehlin | 14 Comments »
Perhaps the most important attribute a leader needs to be successful is accountability. Humans will do amazing things if they know what is expected of them. They will often do stupid things if they don’t.
Consider the parable of the rock:
A village chieftain once asked a young warrior to bring him a rock. The young man, feeling excited, creative, and proud to have been asked, guessed that the chieftain wanted a new decoration for his hut. He went out and found a beautiful quartz crystal and brought it to the chieftain who shrugged and said, “Thank you. But that’s not the rock I wanted. Please try again.” Disappointed, but still resolute, the warrior then decided that the chieftain must be worried about the oncoming winter, so he returned with a piece of coal. “That’s not it either,” said the chieftain. Getting frustrated, the warrior asked around the village and found that the chieftain had asked for rocks before and had once accepted a piece of granite. Thus, the young man traveled several days to a place where he could find granite. He chipped off a large piece and hauled it home to the chief, who didn’t have time to see him, but sent a message through his lieutenant-chieftain that he had changed his mind and no longer wanted a rock.
You’ve probably been on both ends of that story. I know I have. The warrior, instead of spending productive time, spent time trying to divine what the chieftain wanted. What a waste of effort! Clear instructions save everybody time and improve the quality of work. Accountability is impossible without them. You can grow leaders by giving clear instructions and letting them flourish.
I once had a manager who subscribed to the “bring me a rock” school of thought. He was a smart, talented guy, but he had very stringent, inflexible notions of how things ought to be done. He would ask me to bring him a rock over and over and over again until, at last, the rock I brought was the one he wanted. Hey, I eventually brought him what he wanted, so we succeeded together, right? Wrong. Each day seemed like a continual struggle with this manager, and I often felt like I was spinning my wheels. I definitely wasn’t as productive as I could have been. Obviously, this behavior turns people into drones whose purpose is to figure out the leader’s will.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to help your people help you. If you have particular concepts of how things ought to be done, be clear on those up front. People need a sandbox, especially in large enterprises where standards, protocol, politics, and policy, by necessity, govern. But make those boundaries as spacious and as well-documented as possible.
Once you establish boundaries, you must set people free within them. People want to feel empowered. They want to be creative. They want to solve problems and have freedom. Turn them loose and stay out of the way! People are paid to use their brains, and the more they’re micromanaged, the more they have a tendency to turn their brains off. Micromanagement can work well in very small groups with monumental challenges which require heroics. But micromanagement doesn’t grow leaders. I know. I’m a recovering micromanager and I’ve seen the negative effects of meddling on potential leaders.
It may be easy to criticize someone’s ideas. And it’s human nature to think that your way is better. You might even be prescient enough to see a potential train wreck coming. But letting leaders own their decisions allows them to feel accountable and learn from their own mistakes. We can’t (and we shouldn’t) want to teach every person to do every job. We don’t know enough and we don’t have enough time. Let people learn on their own. Each time you swoop in to solve a problem that you see coming you remove a potential lesson from the people in you organization. Accept mistakes for what they are: cheap leadership training courses.
Clear expectations and defined, yet spacious boundaries with room for mistakes will create leaders in your organization.
Joel Dehlin is the father of seven delightful children and the husband of one patient, wonderful woman. His primary love is being with his kids, but he doubles as the Chief Information Officer for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More about Joel...
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