The Gift of Validation

Validation. Everyone needs it. Hardly anyone gets it. Yet it is the very thing that most people crave. More than sex. More than money. More than drugs.

I’m not a psychologist. But I think it’s safe to say that most people who have an unhealthy craving for anything are really craving validation. Why is it so hard to get?

Ultimately, our validation has to come from God. Parents, bosses, spouses, and even friends will disappoint us. They have their own issues. But God is the one Person who is wholly other-centered. He made us in his image and delights in us. He stubbornly loves us even when we are unlovable. If that’s not validation, I don’t know what is.

So while I want to look to God for my own validation, I want to be a validator to others—a reminder of God’s good intentions toward them. I want to affirm that God is for them not against them. That His plans for them are good. That He has given to each person I encounter unique gifts, talents, and strengths. May God give me the grace to see it and acknowledge it. This is leadership in action.

That’s also the beauty of the short film above. I hope you will take the time to watch it. It’s sixteen minutes long, but it’s well worth it. It was was written by Kurt Kuenne and is the recipient of a number of film festival awards.

It reminded me how easy it is to validate others. It means so very much and yet costs so very little. I can’t think of a better gift to give to others. Can you?

Who are you going to validate today?

Repost of Blog from Michael Hyatt. All credit goes to Michael.
http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/02/the-gift-of-validation.html

Don't Surrender

"The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.

It makes me to lie down only when exhausted.

It leads me to deep depression, it hounds my soul.

It leads me in circles of frenzy for activity’s sake.

Even though I run frantically from task to task,

I will never get it all done, for my “ideal” is with me.

Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.

They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule.

They anoint my head with migraines, my in-basket over-flows.

Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forvever.

Marchia K Hornok, Psalm 23, Antithesis"

From the book, Time Traps: Proven Strategies for Swamped Professionals. (http://www.amazon.com/Time-Traps-Strategies-Swamped-Professionals/dp/0785288333/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1250183578&sr=8-2)

Great book to get, read, and apply.

Winning on the uphill

Recently I started back running and riding my bike. I figured that it would provide a good stress relief from the daily activities we all face. As I thought more about it and about business in general, it reminded me of our daily tasks here at work. As I was running last night, I really want to just do around one mile, but I had a nagging feeling that I probably could do 2 miles. I told myself that I could increase my strength, resolve, and stamina if I would not only increase the run to 2 miles but also alter the course to lengthen my uphill distances. So I did. I was good on the first half mile, but wanted to stop after that. I pushed my self and completed the 2 miles in record time. And boy did I feel good about myself. :) So what did I learn. First, set a goal, attack it, and measure it. Second, take the struggles/challenges and push through them. Third, now I look forward to the uphill portion because it teaches me so much more. The uphill portion, that daily struggling of activities that hurt, teaches us more than when we are coasting and going downhill. The competition wants to coast and take the easy path downhill. But you gain little other than some relief taking the easy path. The uphill, hard struggle is the path less traveled. Consider these items as you struggle through your day. The best time to do customer service is when a customer is upset. The best time to teach is when something is broken. The best time to lead is when the direction is unclear. The best time to sell is when the customer has faced a failure of some kind. The best time to become well known as an organizer is when everything seems to be failing apart around the group. If you do these things, you will: Gain the respect of a customer Exponentially increase the knowledge of a worker Become known as the leader because you can step out and get things done. Become known as the "go to person" because you got it done and organized. But more importantly, you will be known as the winner. Which are you, the winner or are you coasting?

International Video Conferencing

As I mentioned in the previous post, we have been testing and evaluating PC and conference room based video telepresence systems. If you go back to basic studies on how people interact, conversations are 90% visual and 10% verbal. We live with telephone service because it allows us to communicate. Cell phones have added mobility to the conversation. YouTube started adding static video. Skype added in real time point-point video calls. (Yes, you could do this with other programs much earlier as well.) There is an evolution of communication moving more toward adding visual elements instead of just audio.

Everyone has talked over the years about how wonderful it would be if we could not only talk with the other person, but also see the other person. Many people discuss how wonderful it would be to see the person on the other end. Others talk about how inappropriate the view could be at times. (Hence, the recent Dilbert strip on telepresence with Dilbert in his shirt and underwear. http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-02-22/). Regardless, the technology IS evolving toward being able to communicate effectively with both video and audio at a reasonable price.

System Comparisons

Cisco Telepresence

Yesterday I was able to sit in on a Cisco Telepresence call. I recently joined the NC Technology Association (www.nctechnology.org) and attended their CIO Connection forum yesterday. Cisco and the sponsors allowed us to use the Cisco Charlotte sales office Telepresence system to meet with other members at the Cisco Raleigh office. Cisco has a great design in their system. There are 3 screens, back lighting, well placed cameras and microphones, and a place to watch a webex for a shared desktop view. The tables are set to merge your view of your table top with that of the table you see in the screen. The tables even have the wood cut so that you can sit between the lines in the table and know which screen you will appear in for the remote party. It was funny though, to sit on the right side of the table, speak, and watch the heads turn toward you. It feels comfortable when you see people in the screen on the left turning to look at you. It feels a little uncomortable when the people in the screen to your right turn to your right to look at you. Regardless, it was a great way to communicate with other technology leaders in a very interactive forum.

Personal Telepresence

Historically, the only way to have these types of video conference calls is to use a system like the Cisco or Tandberg Telepresence systems. That works great for a large corporation with a large conference room. The rest of us have had to wait. Now through the progression of technology, and, as I mentioned before, with the advent of new protocols to handle video in a scalable format, personal telepresence is on its way. Yesterday's Cisco Telepresence meeting was a great way for me to compare a high end system with the new system we are developing. I already had a video conference call scheduled for 5pm yesterday with another company in Australia. Using my PC (Dell Lattitude D820, dual processor @ 2Ghz, a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 ($79 at Amazon), and a USB speakerphone (ClearOne Chat 50), I was able to attend a 6 person video conference on my PC. Two people were in Melbourne Australia, three in our corporate office in Columbia SC, and I was on a cable modem at home (7mb down x 768k up). Everyone was on a PC with a similar setup. I must admit, the video image that I was receiving from Australia was better than the image I was seeing on the Cisco system. To be fair, however, I was watching a smaller image on a 17" computer screen compared with 60" screens at the Cisco office. I'm sure trying to put the PC image on a 60" screen would show the lack of pixels to complete that large of an image. On the other hand, with less than $250 in equipment, a PC, an Internet connection and a system on the back end, I was able to instantly, on the fly, have an international video conference call with people in 6 different locations. There were some issues. I had just upgraded my cable modem from 5mbx512k to 7mbx768k and had not rebooted my cable modem or wireless router. Hence, the other 5 people were seeing some issues with the 500k video stream I was sending. I wasn't having any issues with the 600k stream per person that I was seeing from the other 5 people. It is amazing to be able to pull up to 9 people into a video call from anywhere in the world and get a high quality image. It is still standard def, but will only evolve over time.

Carbon Savings - Going Green

During the call with the chaps in Australia, we discussed the carbon savings of being able to complete the video call on the fly without ever having to fly or drive anywhere. I alone was able to save the company a trip of 160 miles (round trip from where I was located) at the current IRS rate for a savings of $93.60 for one meeting. A single plane ticket alone would have cost at last $1,700/person times at least two people + taxis + meals + hotel rooms. Instead, I was able to spend 1.5 hours on the video call, establish a partnership with another company, and then, more importantly, walk into my kitchen to have dinner with my family after the call.

Evolution or Revolution

The evolution of this technology is going to bring a revolution in how we communicate. The technology will only get better, but the communication between individuals has just jumped exponentially. I realize that this solution is not the end-all for every problem. It will never replace the water cooler conversations where so much work is discussed, initiated, or completed. But it has the potential of lettings us be smarter about how we work and spend more time with our families.

New Video Conferencing Options for Telecommuting

We've been testing and playing around with ideas related to telecommuting and video conferencing for quite some time now. We just released a new product offering related to using webcams for telecommuting. One of the problems we had always dealt with was just getting sufficient bandwidth in order to use the systems. Then the systems were always in a conference room somewhere that everyone had to share. With this new product, we are using H.264SVC which allows us to monitor and adjust to the user's available bandwidth and provide excellent quality. We are using Logitech webcams on PCs. Now, I can go anywhere and have a video conference (audi and video) with my staff or other employees.

Below is a picture of a meeting I held a few months ago. The picture doesn't show the real quality of the picture. We had 3 guys with older single processor laptops and 3 guys with new dual core process laptops. The dual core processor laptops performed much better. The video does put a load on the processors, but that will change over time. In this picture we all used headsets, but most of the time I use a USB speakerphone (ClearOne Chat 50) that does wonders.

















Today was one of those days that I just wasn't feeling as well. Instead of being in the office at 7:30am (70 minutes from home), I had my directors join me on a video con call instead. I was at home on a cable modem and they were in their respective offices. I was able to complete the call, get status updates on all projects, and then go back to bed. Pretty cool (other than I wasn't feeling well). It is changing the way we are working and will hopefully help our customers as well.

We are starting to hear lots of new ways to use the technology. We use it for meetings. One customer talked about using it as a way to put their mascot in front of kids at schools without having to actually make as many trips to the school. Now the mascot can "visit" 10-20 schools in one day instead of 3-4.

Have ideas on how this might help others? Just let me know.

Wayne

Innovation

Today I started an internal competition to find innovative tools to increase our effectiveness and efficiency. It will be interesting to see how well the various employee teams react. I laid out the problem, a set of basic requirements, and the reward.

So far I have had responses from Sales and our Network Operations Center (NOC). The responses range from basic links to a program and to detailed thought on how to better use various tools. It's a good start. More important than the tools that everyone brings to the table, I really want people to think about how to improve their jobs. Too often people get used to the way things used to be. The current processes and procedures were put in place because someone identified need. Everyone that followed, did just that. They followed. I want the leaders to step out of the crowd, think on their own, and find the right solutions. We'll see what happens in the next few days. I'll try to keep you updated on our progress.

Wayne

Which is more important, technology or the product?

I regularly talk with people about what matters. In life, at work, with your family, friends, or in general. What really matters to all of us? When you work in the technology field (engineering or IT or whatever), you have a tendency to think that technology will solve the latest problem. The latest software or gadget could very well solve all the problems. Well, it doesn't.

People don't buy technology. They use and buy what solves the problems with their circumstances. Take a look at technologies that didn't work out even though they were probably the best thing around. If you look at PDAs, the best PDA to come out at the time was the Apple Newton. Apple spent a great deal of money on the product. It gained some recognition, but was way ahead of it's time. The product was cool, had problems, but was not wanted by the user. Then came along the Palm. With the right mix of features, everyone wanted one. It solved the "job" that was needed by business folks. A whopping success. What was the better product, the Newton or the Palm? We could debate this for several hours, but the Palm hit the mark with a good combination of calendar and contacts. At that point, people started paying upwards of $400 for this device.

Another great story is that of Nucor steel. Nucor actually started as a company dealing with other products and services. They bought a scrap metal company. As the company was looking at what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go, they realized that they could never be the best or greatest in their market. Instead, they moved into producing a lower quality steel solution. The steel companies didn't think they had to worry. Why would the customers ever buy a lower quality product. But they did because the lower quality product served their needs at a lower price point.

Look at broadband services. I sat with a customer in the early adoption days as they were considering deploying DSL or cable modems in a rural community. As we discussed the DSL solution, they wanted to know how much capacity to deploy to the customer. They wanted to deploy the full capacity of the DSL equipment. Having spent considerable time looking at customer usage, I could only give them one answer. If you give your customer the full capacity, they will use the capacity. Not everyone, but lots of them. The problem was not the last leg to the customer. The problem was the upstream of this carrier to my network. They didn't want or expect much of an increase in their Internet transit pipe to me. I warned that they would see explosive growth over time. And they did. The broadband connections increase from 3MB in 2000 to multiple Gigs today. The consumer found what they wanted on the Internet and it grew and grew and grew.

What about VoIP? At first, VoIP was a techie toy. A cool gadget. However, once the quality issues were resolved, it became useful. Like cell phones, it provided voice services at, initially, a lower quality with a lower price. Most telephone companies couldn't see that VoIP would take off. However, the consumer saw a need for a service. They had broadband, were willing to suffer a lower quality, and wanted a lower price for all the features provided. Now even the carriers are deploying VoIP as a product. It provides them a new product for customers and helps to lower their own costs.

How about the heart issue? The consumer will buy from their heart quicker than they will from a technology. Take the iPod and the iPhone. You have to ask the questions as to why these products have taken off. First the iPod. Consumer MP3 players had been around for some time. However, the iPod came the consumer a product that was slick, worked well, and solved a need. More importantly, once the consumer bought an iPod, you didn't dare take it away. You should see the the looks I get from my son when I have taken away his iPod as punishment for something he did wrong. People love their iPods. Second, the iPhone. The iPhone obviously built off the success of the iPod and was an overwhelming success. It has issues when it was first rolled out, but people loved the product so much that they were willing to accept the issues. Why else would people move from $45/month cell plans in a tough economy to a $70/month ATT iPhone plan. Because no other product could provide the ease of use, the functionality, and garner the love the iPhone has.

The key to a successful IT project or consumer product or anything else for that matter is to appeal the need of the person. If you can find what solves their immediate problem, they will not only be willing to use your solution, they are willing to pay more for it.

Positive News in a Sour Economy

The Wall Street Journal had an article that I reviewed this morning where they interviewed multiple CEOs to ask them what was more important - strategy or execution. A CEO's focus should be first on strategy and then on execution. You can't have one without another. However, strategy needs to come before execution so that you can actually move in the right direction.

Last year we spent a great deal of time working as an executive team focusing on how to cut costs and increase revenue. Prioritization. Measurements through metrics. Innovation. All of these elements allowed us to push through some very difficult times with great success. As we ended the year, we were already watching and getting ahead of the economy. We started 2009 with a plan to greatly increase revenue even in a down economy. It seems that our hard work last year is already paying dividends this year. Revenue may be even higher than expected and we are still finding optimization elements where we are increasing capacity while lowering costs. Definitely a good mix. We are quite aware that we could easily lose more customers as everyone listens to the news and buckles down to ride out the recession. Obviously, this would put a damper on any positive aspects.

In the meantime, it was great to see Spirit with positive feedback on the local Charlotte news channel where we were mentioned as only 1 of 2 companies hiring this year. If you follow this link and click on the video on the right, you can see how the businesses in Charlotte are viewing the opportunities that 2009 has to offer.

http://www.wbtv.com/global/story.asp?s=9754142

(The question for another blog is: Are the news agencies to blame for the economy by constantly telling everyone how bad the economy is?)

Conficker or Downadup, large anti-virus downloads can take your Internet connection down

We have seen multiple instances lately where customers have called and complained that their Internet connection was going down at various periods of the day. The customers were absolutely sure that something was wrong with their circuit and called our NOC to ask for troubleshooting assistance. Interestingly enough, we have traced the failures back to a single issue with each of these customers.

1. The first key we found was that the customer thought their internet connection was going down for short periods of time on a regular basis. It never seemed to be for more than a few minutes.
2. Once we proved that the circuit was not going down but was receiving a large increase in the volume of bandwidth, the customer wanted to know why they were receiving a denial of service attack. The source of the increased bandwidth did come from a small set of IP addresses.
3. Working with several customers, we were able to positively identify that the source IP addresses were a cluster of servers from Akamai on our network. We were also able to identify that the receiptient of the increased bandwidth, in each case, was a PC, server, or set of PCs downloading virus definition updates. This was accomplished by having the local IT department actually verify that the target IP was in fact a PC downloading the virus definitions/engine.

One particular customer who had a 20mb Ethernet connection was actually receiving 27mb of bandwidth during the downloads. I hope that this post can help other network providers or enterprise customers to pinpoint these short term specific issues.

Internet integrity, or should I say, fragility

How reliable is the Internet?

Our team is working on metrics for last year and it gave me a chance to reflect on what works well and what doesn't. As I looked at the statistics, I was quite pleased and definitely proud of our team. We had several hardware issues that were difficult to push through as we worked with the hardware vendors. The goal of any carrier is to maintain a core network that meets or exceeds 99.999% reliability. The reality of that number is less than 6 minutes of total downtime in a year out of potential 525,600 minutes in a year. I actually have held our team accountable to 5 minutes and 18 seconds per year. We were able to meet 99.999% (around 3 minutes total downtime) on our Internet core and 100% on our other networks. Does this mean that we didn't have any customers go down? Unfortunately, no. On the core network nodes that all customers cross, we hit our numbers. On direct links, we did have customers go down. As copper plants (DSL, T1s, DS3s) continue to age, the number of failures will continue to grow over time. :-(

So how does this relate to fragility on the Internet core? That question takes us to the basic infrastructure of how an enterprise or carrier network is setup. Most large networks are setup using OSPF and BGP. There are multiple ways for network engineers to configure the network and I rarely find one engineer that agrees with another. (Can you say "standards"!) To understand how this is setup using two protocols, you need to understand how BGP determines a best path. Imagine you are headed to Washington D.C. to watch the presidential inauguration. When you get to DC, you ask for directions. Here are your two sets of directions:

Person 1: To get to the party, go down this street and you should get there in about 30 minutes.

Person 2: To get to the party, take a right on Johnson Street and go 2.3 miles. Then turn right on Constitution Avenue, go 1.4 miles and merge onto X street. Go .7 miles down X street....

Which set of directions would you want to follow? The Internet is the same way. Routers will look at their neighbor and choose the more specific path. I watched another carrier in early 2001 take a large percentage of my carrier Internet traffic to Europe by mis-configuring their BGP tables. They announced a more specific route for large portions of our routing table. It took a while, but we finally got them to notice what they had done. On the other end, I've watched customers mis-configure their own routers and try to suck down as much traffic as they could. We could handle the traffic easily, but they could not. We configure our customers with very specific elements to prevent these types of mis-configurations. I can't, however, stop another large carrier from fat-fingering a configuration. When they do, we work with other carriers to blackhole their routing announcements to minimize any issues.

The Internet is amazing in its resiliency to handle traffic the way it does. When you are configuring BGP on your network, make sure that you understand that your configuration does have the potential to impact those around you.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

I listened last night to a presentation on Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI). Interesting thoughts from Chris Horton from Yorel (www.yorel.com). He discussed the history of moving from "green screens" to the current options of how and when to deploy virtual desktops. I'm not sure that I want to go back to mainframe types of services, but are the new solutions going to be the same? Chris reviewed the details and options, vendor agnostic, and covered what would work best. There doesn't appear to be any Capex savings, only Opex savings. I don't see a large rush for people moving to virtual desktops. In a market where everyone is working to cut costs in both Capex and Opex, there needs to be a difinitive ROI and IRR in order to justify the expense or cost cut.

If anyone has good feedback on how they have implemented virtual desktops in the new VDI environment, I would love to hear what works and does not work.

The Future of the Communications World - Serving the Customer

The Future of the Communications World - Serving the Customer.

How I wish that I had the crystal ball that would show us the best path to follow. I talk with various vendors on a regular basis who promise that they are the best and their solution will take us into the next century. Today's announcement that Nortel is filing for bankruptcy started me think, again, along the paths of how best to serve the customer. The customer is different depending on what company you work for. Do you sell to enterprise customers? Do you sell to residential customers? Do you sell to government agencies? Do you care? Many companies spend a lot of time trying to define who the customer is. The definition changes with new products/services, the economy, and, well, the new marketing person.

Who is the customer?

The basic definition usually comes down to two specific points. There is an Internal customer and an external customer. The internal customer is usually your employees in your department or another department within your company. The external customer is the customer you have sold a product or service to outside your company. There is nothing relevational regarding this definition. So why is it so hard for many companies to stay focused? If you look at companies such as Nortel and the others that have filed for bankruptcy, it is usually poor decisions made throughout a company.

What does the customer want?

Many people in technology positions look first at the technology and then how the technology can serve the customer. This works well in some cases, but not in many. The customer is not looking for a technology. Not really. The customer is looking for a solution that will solve the job they want done. It may be a particular technology or it may be a solution combining multiple technologies. Each customer has a job that they want done. Be it washing clothes, sending email, paying bills, moving from one place to another, communications, teaching, etc. The customer just wants to get the job done. If you follow this basic premise, then you understand where to start to find the right technology or solution for your internal or external customer. Price plays a role in the purchase of a solution for a job, but not always. If it always played a role, Apple would not have sold millions of iPhones or iPods. People are willing to pay more if you have the only solution to get a job done. If you are just another vendor, well, get ready for a volume game in order to make money on a commodity product.

How do you choose which way to serve the customer?

This one is easier. The primary focus of any company that wants to stay in business is to build a relationship with a customer. Yes, you can build a relationship with a customer even if you are selling a widget. Apple has a huge following from their customer base. They spent a great deal of time trying to understand the job that the customer needed done. Then they built a product/widget that met those needs. By listening to the customer, they built a relationship that goes deep and strong. Nortel, ironic enough, used to do the same thing. Nortel spent a great deal of time building products that the customer needed. First, it was a product that no one else had and they could charge a premium for the product(s). Then they built a relationship by setting up regular and constant visits/communication with the customer. They were good about bringing customers into the lab and showing them how their product. They did multiple testing scenarios and really took care of the customer.

Why does Apple succeed and why is Nortel failing?

Look back at the history of what Apple has achieved and where they have failed. Apple has had plenty of successes and failures. Many people attribute the success of Apple only to Steve Jobs. Jobs is a driving force in their success, but he is not the only one. He has the vision, determination, and focus, but other people do the work. Apple went downhill when Jobs left and grew to dominance when he returned. Compare Nortel. They have been a leader for a long, long time in several areas. In particular, we have used their phone switch DMS gear and their SONET gear. The systems were just well built and ran. They had their share of problems. But between a system that worked and the relationship with the customer, they built a strong company. The problem from my viewpoint is that Nortel missed the change in the winds. They produced phone systems where a new feature (i.e. Caller ID) would cost a carrier $50k +. They had SONET gear that was about as redundant as you could get. The winds changed, the customer changed their need for the job, and new products/solutions/services were needed. Customers wanted solutions where they could get 50 features on a phone instead of just 3 for the same price. Hence, VoIP became stable and took off. Customers wanted flexibility in networks and wanted to be able to grow. Ethernet moved from a LAN technology to a WAN technology with scalability. Convergence arrived. VoIP and Ethernet changed the landscape.

I'm not saying that VoIP and Ethernet caused the problem for Nortel. I'm saying that the customer's needs changed. They wanted something different and "better". Nortel was not able to move in the right direction. Customers bought more of the other solutions. Nortel hung on to current products. Customers bought more of other solutions. Nortel stayed firm. Customers moved and Nortel tried change. But it was too late. The new innovators came in with new solutions to solve the needs of the customer and simply took the customers away from Nortel. Now their isn't enough money from current customers to research and deliver new products. Too little too late.

VoIP and Ethernet were not, initially, the best techonologies. Ethernet still does not provide a customer the level of redundancy that SONET does. But everyone wants the flexibility of Ethernet and will accept a lower level of performance - for now. Ethernet, however, will either provide the same level of redundancy over time or it will be replaced. (As a comparison, we achived 99.999% uptime on a core MPLS/VPLS network for 2008.)

Conclusion

Apple has succeeded because they listened to the customer and are currently delivering a product that meets the need for the job. They have the hammer to pound the nail. It won't last though. Plenty of competitors are on their tails. Nortel missed the boat and failed to respond to the basic principle. Meet the needs of the customer for the job they want done when they want it done.

Good Reading.

If you are interested in getting more details along these lines with some good data, take a look at these two books to help undestand the customer focus and the internal disciple needed to be successful.

- The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business - by Clayton M. Christensen (Author)

- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't - by Jim Collins (Author)

** All views are my own. Feedback always welcome. :)