With the holidays about over, I'm catching up on my RSS feed reading. This is an article from the beginning of December from Joel Spolsky. In it he talks about his brand of servant leadership and how he learned it:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081201/how-hard-could-it-be-my-style-of-servant-leadership.html?partner=fogcreek
He makes this point on page 2:
Getting glare off the computer monitors so that people can write code actually is my highest priority.
As a leader, sometimes the best thing you can do is clear out all the minutae so the folks who work for you can get the job done. Actually, this is the case almost all of the time. That's the mission at Fog Creek: to write selling software. So if it takes him hanging blinds to get the mission done, that's the right call.
The type of leadership Spolsky describes in a lot of ways matches the way I was taught to be a leader:
The last one probably bears a little explanation. It isn't just about title and responsibility. It's also about tools and training and confidence and experience. Case in point: don't expect a person who's never done a difficult task before to succeed with flying colors. Prepare them with smaller tasks that build up their experience, confidence, and ability first.
Back in October I had the opportunity to work with Andy Warren and do a series of SQL Server security videos for Jumpstart TV. Chris Rock did a bit of editing to add some polish to them as I was (and still am) a complete rookie at the video-type training. I need to take some lessons from Chuck Boyce and Steve Jones. In any case, here is the list of the videos I did:
My videos at Jumpstart TV
Another diabolical idea of Chris Shaw. I'm actually late to the game because I got tagged a week ago by Jason Massie.
The Questions for this quiz… What are the largest challenges that you have faced in your career and how did you overcome those?
Challenge #1: Taking Care of My Troops
I was a first lieutenant in the USAF. Had been in about 3 years. My dad is a retired Marine GySgt. My uncle is a retired Marine MSgt. As a kid I grew up around Marine enlisted personnel. And one of the things I learned is you take care of your troops. Yes, the mission is always #1. But your troops had better be a close #2. One of my airmen had recently welcomed home a new baby. But his wife was in a lot of pain and they suspected she had gotten an infection after giving birth. The problem was he had to go through the military health care system. And they were blowing him off because he was a junior enlisted guy. I listened to him for the better part of a day and a half to get seen. He had been to ambulatory care and they wouldn't see his wife. Back and forth passing the buck between the military and the civilian doctors meant this airman's wife was getting no treatment. Finally I had enough.
The military hospital was on the other side of town because we were a split base. I told my airman to get his wife and I'd meet him at the hospital. It was late in the afternoon, most doctors came in as captains, so I really didn't know what I'd do, but based on what I had been taught by my family and by The Citadel, I had a responsibility to this man and his family. I figured I would get over there, see what was going on, then call a major I knew from my Bible study group as to what to do next. Not much of a plan, I admit.
We met up at the hospital and we walked around to ambulatory care. And we happened to chance upon a card game being played by the orderlies, the same orderlies who had refused to see him before. Oops. That was my in. Given they were enlisted and I was an officer, I immediately pulled rank. Something to the effect of, "Since you guys have enough to play cards, you've got enough time to take care of my airman's wife. Right?" as I looked right at the cards. He and his wife were taken back immediately. And as it turned out, the military referred it out immediately because it was an infection that was far worse than it should have been.
Challenge #2: Lost Tickets
Shortly after I got out of the USAF, I went to work with BellSouth Advertising and Publishing Company (the phonebook portion of the org) as a contract system administrator. We had this helpdesk ticket system that left a lot to be desired. The GUI interface we had allowed us to see the tickets that were currently in our queue at Columbia. But trying to find tickets that had originated out of Columbia but were assigned to another group was a real problem. The search functionality left a lot to be desired. What would happen is one of the employees would call a problem in to the help desk and it would soon get assigned to one of the groups in Atlanta. In some case we never even saw the ticket. And about two weeks later we'd have a user calling us asking what the status was. We were not pleased.
So I spent time figuring out how the help desk software worked. I reasoned it was serviced by a database back-end... but which one and what was the login? The laptop I was issued had been drop-shipped to me with an image already on it. Help desk software was pre-configured before I ever got it. But I spent some time poking around the config and figured out it was connecting to a SQL Server back-end. Now, to log in to the help desk software, I had to type a username and password combo that was different from my Windows one. This smacked of a SQL Server login. Sure enough, that was the case. It happened to be a SQL Server 6.5 box and I had a legitimate login to connect. About half a day poking through the schema and I had figured out how the ticketing system worked. The information to track tickets originating from Columbia was there. Two days later we had an ASP-based web site that allowed us to find every ticket. We found tickets going back two years and started sending emails to the appropriate groups asking what the status was and why they weren't closed. Amazingly enough, we got a lot of surprised responses and suddenly groups were working on our tickets.
I've been off-line except for hints here and there for the last couple of weeks due to fighting off an illness. One thing I've learned about working with youth, especially during this part of the year, is that I've got to start looking to boost my immune system. Part of that is getting back into a regular exercise program again (I need that for general health) and watching what I eat, but it's also time to do some more research. I've seen anecdotal evidence on the effervescent tablets that have a good dose of Vitamin C and Zinc, but I need to see if there's anything out there that shows they actually work.
Now that I'm feeling better, I've posted a prior announcement about the Midlands PASS chapter meeting tonight. Paul Shearer will be presenting deploying SQL Server on Hyper-V. I'm really looking forward to that because he's bringing real world experience to discuss what his organization did and the success that they saw. Can't beat that. Paul is a smart guy who does a performance tuning presentation each year at the user group, always to high raves because he's not only good at what he does, but also because he can communicate it well. If you're reading this and you can make it, we'd love to have you.
Also, I'll be at the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group this coming Tuesday, December 9th. I'll be presenting Fortress SQL Server, basically security features of interest to DBAs and developers who work with SQL Server. I learned from the last SQL Saturday that the Treasure Seekers presentation, which also tries to have something for sysadmins, is just too long now. I end up rushing through it and while I get a lot of information out quickly, it's not the right way to do it. I'm looking forward to heading out that way. I graduated from the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics, so me and the family are going to stop in Hartsville for dinner with one of my former professors who I keep in touch with and still look to as a mentor for life, faith, and how to be a great teacher. I'll use the opportunity to pick his brain on how I can be better in all three areas.
And on a job note, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a transfer within my organization back into a SQL Server centric role. I've spent the last seven years on the server and domain side, and as much fun as that area is, it meant I wasn't touching SQL Server every day. I love SQL Server and the continuing growth in the SQL Server family, so I'm looking forward to getting back to the technology I am most passionate about. If the transfer doesn't work out, I still love what I do now. But with a chance to get back to day-to-day SQL Server work, I had to take a shot at it.
Speaker: Paul Shearer
Midlands PASS Chapter - December 4, 2008 Meeting
The Midlands PASS chapter will hold our normally scheduled meeting on Thursday, December 4, 2008. Paul Shearer will be giving a presentation entitled "Virtualization Everything" in which he'll cover virtualizing SQL Server for large scale apps using Hyper-V technology. This is definitely one you'll want to attend and invite your system administrators to as well!
The meeting will once again be held at Training Concepts off of Berryhill Road. We will begin our meet and greet time at 6:15 PM as usual and start the at 6:45 PM. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think would be interested in attending. If you haven’t already done so and plan on attending, please RSVP (kbriankelley {at} acm {dot} org) as soon as possible so. If you have time to help with setup, please email me and we’ll plug you in!
