Interlude - Index of

138 | Grown-Up Company
the same way, the right way, every time. They certainly don’t
want Varun sleeping in a van in their parking lot.
This is a great example of how behaviors need to change
even as values stay the same. I want our employees today to
work just as hard as Varun did to ensure customer success, but
I also hope that no engineer ever again sneaks into manufacturing
at midnight and swipes a replacement system. We do it
differently now.
Years later I got a lesson on failure experience from a support
engineer in our call center. Walking by his cube, I noticed
that he had ripped dozens of pages out of the manual and
taped them on the wall. I figured he might have some good
ideas for improving the product, so I gestured to the wall and
asked, “What is most important when a customer calls?” He
said, “The most important thing is that they don’t hear me
flipping through a manual.”
Semper Wi Fi
We invited customers to a meeting to share their storage experiences,
and several military officers came. The military uses a bunch of our
equipment, some in Iraq bolted inside Humvees. Combat generates lots
of data.
One officer mentioned the smoking pit scenario, and a civilian in the
room asked, “What’s that?” The officer explained, “Our mission is to
support the warfighter no matter what, even if a data center is bombed
and becomes a smoking pit.”
Later a civilian described the work he was doing to create a secure
data center, and the same officer said, “People like to think all strategic,
but sometimes you’ve got to be more tactical. Like if you’re out in the
field, and you need a secure data center, I say put up a tent and two
marines in front with .45s. There is your secure data center.”