The Data Center industry is full of many people who are convinced their way is the right way and others are wrong.  They have years of hard work to prove their methods are right and work, emphasizing the strength and speed of what they can get done.

TED conference has a talk given by Lewis Pugh on a mind-shifting experience he went through that has a good lesson to learn from.  If you want to jump to the point where I am referencing it is at 6:25 mark.  The video is only 10 min, but quite enjoyable.

Lewis discusses as a lesson to make a true change for the climate requires a different mind-set.

Lewis starts using the same methods he has successfully used in the past.

And then we got up to this small lake underneath the summit of Mt. Everest, and I prepared myself, the same way as I've always prepared myself, for this swim which was going to be so very difficult. I put on my iPod, I listened to some music, I got myself as aggressive as possible -- but controlled aggression -- and then I hurled myself into that water.

I swam as quickly as I could for the first hundred meters, and then I realized very, very quickly, I had a huge problem on my hands. I could barely breathe. I was gasping for air. I then began to choke, and then it quickly led to me vomiting in the water. And it all happened so quickly I then -- I don't know how it happened -- but I went underwater. And luckily, the water was quite shallow, and I was able to push myself off the bottom of the lake and get up and then take another gasp of air. And then I said, carry on. Carry on. Carry on. I carried on for another five or six strokes, and then I had nothing in my body, and I went down to the bottom of the lake. And I don't where I got it from, but I was able to somehow pull myself up and as quickly as possible get to the side of the lake. I've heard it said that drowning is the most peaceful death that you can have. I have never ever heard such utter bollocks. (Laughter) It is the most frightening and panicky feeling that you can have.

Almost dying gave Lewis a dose of humility.  And his crew gave him a new plan.

And there, we sat down, and we did a debrief about what had gone wrong there on Mt. Everest. And my team just gave it to me straight.They said, Lewis, you need to have a radical tactical shift if you want to do this swim. Every single thing which you have learned in the past 23 years of swimming, you must forget. Every single thing which you learned when you were serving in the British army, about speed and aggression,you put that to one side. We want you to walk up the hill in another two days time. Take some time to rest and think about things. We want you to walk up the mountain in two days time, and instead of swimming fast, swim as slowly as possible.Instead of swimming crawl, swim breaststroke.And remember, never ever swim with aggression.This is the time to swim with real humility.

And here are the two big lessons that Lewis relates.

But I learned two very, very important lessons there on Mt. Everest. And I thank my team of Sherpas who taught me this. The first one is that just because something has worked in the past so well, doesn't mean it's going to work in the future. And similarly, now, before I do anything, I ask myself what type of mindset do I require to successfully complete a task. And taking that into the world of climate change, which is, frankly, the Mt. Everest of all problems -- just because we've lived the way we have lived for so long, just because we have consumed the way we have for so long and populated the earth the way we have for so long, doesn't mean that we can carry on the way we are carrying on. The warning signs are all there. When I was born, the world's population was 3.5 billion people. We're now 6.8 billion people, and we're expected to be 9 billion people by 2050.

And then the second lesson, the radical, tactical shift. And I've come here to ask you today: what radical tactical shift can you take in your relationship to the environment, which will ensure that our children and our grandchildren live in a safe world and a secure world, and most importantly, in a sustainable world? And I ask you, please, to go away from here and think about that one radical tactical shift which you could make,which will make that big difference, and then commit a hundred percent to doing it. Blog about it, tweet about it, talk about it, and commit a hundred percent. Because very, very few thingsare impossible to achieve if we really put our whole minds to it.

So thank you very, very much.

(Applause)

We have all been frustrated by a bean counter approach that focus on the numbers.  Where a short term cost reduction is viewed as a win, even though your long term health suffers.

An example of a potential obsession on a data center efficiency number is PUE.  PUE is often used as identifying a green data center, but PUE is only one number and not the end goal.

The Phoenix Principle has a guest blog post that touches on the Yin and Yang of Operational Excellence.

The Yin & Yang of Operational Excellence & Innovation

Efficiency is a good thing, taken in moderation. The same with focus. It is good management hygiene to pay attention to what you’re doing and try to do it efficiently. This helps build a competitive cost structure and a results-based culture. From an operations standpoint that means that the use of an occasional stopwatch or its modern day equivalents in order to eliminate wasted effort and speed workflows makes perfect sense. Frederick Taylor made the great contribution in 1911 of helping companies recognize that labor is a controllable cost that can be managed, but he taught that a narrow focus on the optimization of each operation and repetition of the “best practice” was the key to success. He missed the point (among others) that it is really the improvement of the process as a whole that changes the game. It took Toyota and Yamaha and other Japanese companies to teach the world that lesson 70 years later – leading to today’s six sigma, lean, and time compression concepts.

One of the points well made is an obsession that can occur when management focuses on efficiency as the end.

The pursuit (often obsession) of operational excellence becomes an end unto itself and gets disconnected from the mission of generating growth and creating value.

How many companies are limited by its IT group and data center capacity?

The end game is not to get lean and agile, but rather to get lean and agile so that you can compete more effectively – leveraging these capabilities to go to market in innovative new ways, to compete in new markets, and ultimately to create new markets.

Which is part of why cloud computing solutions like AWS are successful as companies can side step the corporate IT/data center group as they don't want to incur any new costs.

Be careful trying to be too efficient and miss the focus on supporting the business.

Do you have an accurate image of yourself?

I had one of my local high tech friends come by for an afternoon chat.  It was the first time he had come over, and we spent a couple of quiet hours discussing all kinds of topics including data centers.  My friend appreciated the Zen and quiet time I get working from home.  Whenever someone suggests travel, I try to figure out how I can skip the plane flight. :-)

The next day I got up in the morning, and started writing.

This is the view to the south at the same time the sun was rising above.

As the evening was approaching, and the moon was almost full. I was using the quiet time to meditate, and try some higher consciousness exercises.

The concept of higher consciousness rests on the belief that the average, ordinary human being is only partially conscious due to the character of the untrained mind and the influence of 'lower' impulses and preoccupations. As a result, most humans are considered to be asleep (to reality) even as they go about their daily business.

As the night progressed, I decided to have my own outdoor movie and brought out my laptop to stream a Netflix movie, "The Sensei"

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MARTIAL ARTS FILM

A Different Kind of Martial Arts Film: D. Lee Inosanto’s ‘The Sensei’ battles prejudice and homophobia in 1980s small town in Colorado

If there’s one thing D. Lee Inosanto is no stranger to, it’s martial arts. Her father is martial arts legend Dan Inosanto, her godfather was the late Bruce Lee (whom she refers to simply as “Uncle Bruce”), and Inosanto herself is a highly trained martial artist who has worked as a stunt person on projects from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Face/Off.

Then the next morning it hit the connection between the method of higher consciousness and situation awareness.

Situation awareness, or SA, is the perception of environmental elements within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future. It is also a field of study concerned with perception of the environment critical to decision-makers in complex, dynamic areas from aviation, air traffic control, power plant operations, military command and control, and emergency services such as fire fighting and policing; to more ordinary but nevertheless complex tasks such as driving an automobile or motorcycle.

Situation awareness (SA) involves being aware of what is happening around you to understand how information, events, and your own actions will impact your goals and objectives, both now and in the near future. Lacking SA or having inadequate SA has been identified as one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error (e.g., Hartel, Smith, & Prince, 1991; Merket, Bergondy, & Cuevas-Mesa, 1997; Nullmeyer, Stella, Montijo, & Harden, 2005). Thus, SA is especially important in work domains where the information flow can be quite high and poor decisions may lead to serious consequences (e.g., piloting an airplane, functioning as a soldier, or treating critically ill or injured patients).

There are some people I am working with to apply the ideas of situation awareness (a higher level of consciousness) to the data center.  Here is a situation awareness demo using Geographic Information System (GIS) information from ESRI.

Part of the fun things I am working on is with people who have a situation awareness, a higher level of consciousness of what is going on data centers.  The challenge we have is discussing things we discover with people "who don't know what they don't know."

A Chinese Proverb states.

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool...shun him.

He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is willing...teach him.

He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep...awaken him.

He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise...follow him.

How many data center errors/mistakes could be prevented if systems and methods are set up to support a situational awareness.  A consciousness of what what is going on.

Eric Gallant, a Lee Tech employee commented on this concept.

Eric Gallant said...

Excellent thought Dave. Prior to getting into the data center industry, I operated nuclear power plants for the Navy. After countless hours standing watch in the engine room, my senses became tuned to the environment. I could recognize a change in the pitch of a steam turbine, detect the slightest hint of acrid odor from a switchgear section and identify suspicious vibrations in the deck plates through the soles of my boots. My analog senses were often more useful than the abundant digital meters and detectors that monitored plant conditions.
The same phenomenon can be found in experienced data center professionals. I’ve seen data center operators sprint from their offices before the first alarm sounds because of a barely perceptible change in the quality of the light. I’ve even seen an engineer diagnose a bad CRAH shaft bearing by pressing his forehead against the front of the running machine.
As a managers and engineers we focus on metrics. As the old saw goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” And a good deal of engineering is knowing how, what and why to measure. Perhaps we focus on the measurable and quantifiable to the detriment of our more visceral abilities.