Sunday April 17, 2005

Books and Baseball

Back on March 20 I mentioned that I was reading three books. I've finished two of them and read one not on the list so I thought I would summarize my impressions.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides was my book club book back in February and I talked about it then but I hadn't finished it. Now that I have I can say I enjoyed the book. It is a family saga about a Greek-American family who have a hermaphrodite child. But I would also agree with Stephen O'Grady's comment on my posting. He said he thought the story was a bit overwrought. I also thought it was somewhat contrived. For example, there was a part in the book where the family was exposed to the start of the Black Muslim movement. The coincidence was hard to believe. In spite of that I would recommend the book.

The second book was also a book club book. I read it for my April book club. The Book of Salt by Monique Truong was not my kind of book. It is about a Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1930s Paris. Truong has amazing skill with language. Her descriptions of food and scene are masterful. She developed the theme of cultural isolation so effectively that it impacted my feelings. In spite of all that I disliked The Book of Salt. At first I thought the Toklas / Stein connection was a gimmick to get people to buy the book then I thought maybe she was trying to emulate Stein and that was why there was no story. In any case I don't enjoy a book without a story and this book didn't have one.

I really loved the third book I read. Moneyball by Michael Lewis was the most enjoyable book I have read in a long time. A good non fiction book is hard to beat. Moneyball is about statistics in baseball and how the Oakland A's use them to win more than almost any other team in baseball while having one of the smallest salary budgets in baseball. They employ the baseball equivalent of the efficient market theory of investing. I highly recommend the book.

We went to see the A's play the Anaheim Angels this afternoon. It was great fun to see the people I had read about. There is a whole chapter about Scott Hatteberg who plays first base and also quite a bit about Nick Swisher. We were one row behind the Angel's dugout so there was often a guest relations person standing right by us to make sure no one climbed on to the field. I heard him asking the guy in front of me if he had read Moneyball when I said I had he pointed out which players he thought were current undervalued players. We see the A's play a couple of times a year. Today was fun. It was beautiful day and they won a close game 6-7.

How to get iWork Support

In Phillip Wagstrom's recent blog entry he talked about helping a co-worker who had a problem with her work from home technology. One of the big challenges the iWork Soultions group faces is how to provide top quality support for people's work from home technical environments. I think the problem that Phillip fixed would have been a difficult one to fix over the phone. One solution is the Sun Ray at home. It pretty much eliminates the problem because people don't need to manage their own systems. But for people who need a fat client or in other words a laptop or PC that needs administration the solution often is to find a friend who will help. Cookies or beer definitely help.

The Importance of Metrics

One of my core beliefs about management is the importance of metrics and measuring what you do. You may have noticed in my last posting that we measure user satisfaction with their work environment before and after any office is converted to an iWork environment. We also do an annual iWork survey. I am absolutely convinced that having these metrics si a big part of why iwork has been successful at Sun. Anytime people start talking about why or how iWork works or doesn't work. We can provide them with data not just opinions. Data is so much more powerful than opinions when you are debating something.

Another reason metrics are important is that they help focus an organization on what is important. Bill Vass, our CIO, has published a Top 10 Rules for executives to Succeed with Technology rule number 8 is you manage what you measure. I've saw this work when I was on Bill's staff before he bacame the CIO and I've seen this work in my own organization. We once had an outsource vendor come in that was doing a horrible job. From the beginning we measured their performance and it the data gave us the ability to manage and improve their performance. When a customer support organization measures customer satisfaction then customer satisfaction gets better. The list of examples is endless. You manage what you measure.

We are talking about how we can improve the satisfaction with iWork next year. Something that I think we might do is create a iWork issues desk. It would be an escalation point for anyone is having a problem with iWork. People get problems resolved but we will also analyze and report on what the most common problems are what the root causes are. We can then work to fix the root causes. Many of us have opinions about what our biggest problems are but this will give us data to help us fix them.