Many of us in Redmond and the Seattle area have been recovering from a severe winter storm. After four days, we’re finally back in the house, but many of our friends are still camping out in hotels and huddling by fireplaces.
When the power was finally restored on our block late last night, the house thermometer read 40F.
Now, back to my email backlog. I’m thankful that I was able to keep up (somewhat) via my PocketPC phone.
Not since I rode through the Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area have I been in such a power outage… this time couple that with freezing cold temperatures. Due to a windy December storm in the Seattle area, the news reports that many people are still without power. This from the local news:
“Utility crews were working nonstop through the weekend to restore service to hundreds of thousands of people still without power after a windstorm hit Western Washington.
“The storm was the worst in more than a decade, claiming four lives and sending several dozen people to a local hospital after they suffered carbon monoxide poisoning.”
As noted in a previous post, we have all our canned goods, bottled water, spare batteries and misc supplies for more than three days to ride out just about anything that Mother Nature might throw at us.
But we woefully underestimated the impact of the cold.
This afternoon, when the norm is usually around 67 or 68 inside, our house was a balmy 48 degrees F (that’s 8C for my Canadian friends), as compared with the temperature outside at 33 degrees (which MSN weather says feels like 29). (And it’s supposed to be in the mid 20s tonite.) The living room fireplace at home doesn’t cut it and it’s just plain cold. So we dined on pizza tonite (thanks, Jon & Stephanie!) and watched TV (Elf, followed by The Santa Clause) in the office. Clearly, a number of people are in the same boat, given the number I’ve run into at the office microwaving nearly thawed dinners and hot chocolate.
PSE (the local power company) said that “380,000 (are) still without power. 250 crews are working to restore power instead of the typical crew of 60. And 150 more crews are on their way to help, from as far as Kansas. Most of the transmission lines have been repaired.”
Very cool. Applause for the people in the trucks fixing the power lines tonite. You rock.
If you have power and you’re wondering what you should keep and what to throw out, check out the Red Cross site on Food Safety in a Power Outage. And if you’re planning on making some end-of-the-year donations, give to local Red Cross — they have done a super job helping people in the area — or your local United Way.
Nuff said, I’m turning out the light to see how comfortable this office chair really is in a pinch.
J Allard — one of the few people with a name shorter than mine — is featured along with several others Microsoftie execs in BusinessWeek. Doug Hebenthal says in the article: “In every case in which I work with J, there is a mountain to climb, there is a clear leader, and most folks would see that mountain as insurmountable,” he says. “The thing about the guys who work with J is that we never think things are insurmountable. In fact, that’s the draw.”
This week Seth Godin writes about lambchops, specifically “The lambchop theory of success.”
First, his definition:
Lambchop: “A kind, thoughtful person. Someone who keeps her promises. Someone who does great work but doesn’t always brag about it. Someone you’d like to work with again.
“It used to be that a real jerk who got results was exactly what you needed. Today, in a world that’s a lot more connected and a lot more permeable, lambchops win out”
I run into people that fall under these definitions. Today, I ran into a Lambchop. I took my son to get a bunch of new items and uniform pieces for his latest endeavour: Cub Scouts. Traveling to the Scout Shop in downtown Seattle, I realized only when we arrived that I’d left my wallet at home. Knowing that they’d soon close, I told the man behind the counter – smartly dressed in a Scout Master uniform – of my forgetfulness.
“No problem. If you want, get the information from your wife and we’ll send you on your way with everything you need today,” he told me.
Huh? I was surprised.
And then he stepped from behind the counter and proceeded to help us collect all the various items my eight-year-old would need to fit in with his other Bear Cub Scouts at their next meeting, explaining all of the ins and outs, the detailed info on each item. This was Nordstrom’s-class customer service, and coming from a man wearing a kerchif. (OK, maybe he wasn’t… but he had the official uniform on.) A few minutes later we were on our way, my son happy that he had all his gear, and me happy that I didn’t have to drive round trip twice to Seattle.
At Microsoft, we talk a lot about a focus on improving the experiences that our Customers and Partners have with us, corporate citizenship and generally remembering what it was like to be a customer of Microsoft. Talk is cheap, as they say. So as employees, we tend to be our own worst critics and supporters: we not only use our own services, software and hardware products, but we deliver feedback to product teams on the good and the bad (and sometimes the ugly ;).
And when we do this, the people that command the most respect — and frankly get the best feedback from the product teams — tend to be the ones who offer constructive and thoughtful feedback, rather than Seth’s described “real jerks” as noted above. There just seem to be more connected people working on behalf of our customers and partners these days, doing the right things.
Tags: customer satisfaction, seth godin, whack.
Yesterday I sat in part of Bob McDowell’s session at MS101, our internal orientation for new hires. (There’s also an MS101 now offered to our external partners.) Bob is arguably one of the most dynamic speakers at the company. MS101 attendees gave him a standing ovation after his 3-4 hour talk, during which he did not use a single slide. Bob is the author of “In Search of Business Value: Ensuring a Return on Your Technology Investment” (with review available here).
During his talk, Bob mentioned the 2003 article “IT Doesn’t Matter” by Nicholas Carr, available via HBR Online. The author has reference links to this article on his web site, and there’s a good summary of the original article available here.
If you find this of interest, see also Businessweek’s brief article “Just How Important Is IT Anyway?” It’s a discussion with Mr. Carr and Bob McDowell, talking about “whether today’s IT can offer companies a competitive advantage.” Bob said in the article that “one of the difficulties with this discussion is you can’t define what IT means today insofar as it will be absolutely accurate 5 to 10 years down the road. Unlike electricity and the railroad, you’re going to see continued innovation.”
From the article:
Where do you see this debate going?
McDowell: I think Nick and others who’ve raised this issue are doing a service because it’s causing the industry to be a lot more serious in focusing on true business value. One of the risks, and I’ll admit it, of the ’90s, was a lot of us got involved to some extent in hype and promises that exceeded reality, and some mistakes were made.
There is a lot more businesslike focus in IT today. From an industry perspective, I think you can differentiate…one supplier from another on how well they make the business case, not on how much they focus on technology as an end in itself.
Carr: Focusing on the exceptions and what can we learn from them is a much more interesting discussion than the way it started out. We’ve moved beyond the era where IT vendors can get away with just saying every new product was “strategic” and “you’ve gotta have this.”
The industry has moved beyond that. We’re at the stage of the debate where it’s focused on more concrete things that can help the actual buyers and users of technology do a better job.