[2013] IBM
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My career in tatters after BTR, and my resolve to be a CEO abandoned, I went to IBM. I went there, largely on the advice of the Tavistock Institute, because I thought it was the best company in the world; and the Tavistock had advised me to go for the organization not the job! I stayed because it then really was the best company in the world. I left because – after half a century on top of the world - it was slipping off this pedestal!
After I left, because I still believed in everything it had stood for, I wrote about it as my first published book . This described IBM as it had been up to that time, and it became my most successful trade book. Later I wrote a longer version of the book, though it was never published, this time also describing its calamitous decline after that time. In the context of my later experience working on the Open University MBA, this also drew out more clearly the lessons to be learned. This later version is the one included here.
Thus, it uniquely describes the corporation where I worked in more detail, indeed in much more detail (running to 235,000 words in total), than I have done for my other employers. It sets the context for the more personal notes which follow. The sections which follow immediately below are the chapters of the unpublished book, and as such are much longer than most of the autobiographical sections elsewhere in this compilation:
9412 IBM1 - INTRODUCTION
9081 IBM2 - FOUNDING OF IBM
9034 IBM3 – THE SONS
9099 IBM4 - BUREAUCRATS
9053 IBM5 - SALES SUPERMEN
9042 IBM6 - COUNTRIES AND THEIR DIVISIONS
9010 IBM7 - HUMAN RELATIONS STRATEGY
9065 IBM8 - TWO JOHN'S
9069 IBM9 - MARKETING STRENGTHS
9093 IBM11 - MICROSOFT
9056 IBM12 - PC DISASTERS
9082 IBM13 - GERSTNER
9091 IBM14 - ADVANCED PHILOSOPHIES II
9057 IBM15 - WHODUNIT?
9043 IBMAppendix A - FINANCIAL HISTORY
9073 IBM - BIBLIOGRAPHY
In reality, my first year and a half at IBM required a return to school. Indeed, as post-graduate education in IT and business methods, the education I then received was never bettered; even by my later experience at the London Business School. Not least, my fellow students were the crème de la crème – and incredibly well motivated.
0200 Education
0195 IBM Digs
0174 My Sales Training
The very real motivation of all of us resulted from:
0143 The Advantages of Working There
Even so, IBM was all about selling, which meant that - as with all its high level entrants – I had to spend a period in the sales force. However, at the time this was no great loss – since it was the best sales force in the world. The accounts I then ran included:
0187 Cinzano
0120 Hitachi
0144 George Meyer and other accounts
These gave me a significant range of experience in the selling game; experience which is rarely available to academics. Accordingly, it introduced me to a range of sales philosophies and techniques which I later incorporated in my second book; a down-to-earth primer on sales. I have been told that this was the most readable book I have ever written, but it was not a great success. Those new to selling want the glib simplifications put forward by the sales trainers, and experienced sales professionals are wise enough not to bother with such literature! It is not included in this collection, but the following sections describe the experiences which led up to it:
0162 Sales Enthusiasm & Learning
0138 Idiosyncratic Selling
0172 Sales Prioritisation
0114 Sales Detective Work
0117 Reference Visits
0199 Presentations
0165 Account Management
9267 Sales Territories
0104 Competitor Salesmen
0185 Hundred Per Cent Clubs (0185T*)
And then, after achieving a significant measure of success in the field, I rapidly graduated to my first teaching job; teaching trainees, where I had only recently been such a trainee myself:
0153 Teaching
0163 Business Education
0259 Education Staff
0173 Sales Trainer
0129 Dummy Calls
0244 GSD Education
0220 GSD Business School
(0220T*)
9120 LBS Teaching
After something like seven years in such teaching, I finally moved on to the marketing side which I had confidently expected to join soon after my original training had ended:
0246 GSD Marketing Group
0255 System/38
0209 IBM 5110
0181 Terry Osborne
But this lasted less than a year, before I was moved on – somewhat against my wishes – to what turned out to be the best long term job I had in IBM:
0224 Joining Biomedical
0134 Biomedical Entry
(0134T*)
0278
Launching Biomedical
0280 A
Day in New York (Clairvoyance)
0221
International Meetings of Biomedical
0125
IBM (Biomedical) promotion (0125T*)
0232
Biomedical Seminars and Symposia
9181
Biomedical - Medical experience
0131 Biomedical Research
0206
IBUs – IBM Independent Business Units
0213
Demise of Biomedical
Although this job lasted another seven years, it eventually ended when my recommendation to close down the whole division worldwide was accepted by the IBM Board, and I was once more looking for another job in IBM:
0219 IBM Corporate Strategy Group
Unfortunately, the job I then got - which on paper should have been ideal - was an almost total loss as a career move. On the other hand, it did lead on – once more against my wishes - to the best job I ever had in IBM; albeit that it inevitably only could last a few months:
9126 IBM Exhibit
0193 IBM Exhibit 2
9131 Exhibit -- Corporate Entertainment
After the few glorious months that this lasted, I then insisted on a move to the PC Group, which – I believed (with some justification in view of what happened to it later ) desperately needed my skills. Once more I made the wrong decision, for this job only lasted just a few days. Worse still, it directly led to my forced exit from IBM:
0203 IBM Relocation Group
0207 IBM Speak Up
0299 IBM Defamation and Departure
0211 IBM Constructive Dismissal Claim
0223 IBM Ilt Caddick Letter
* Text only versions
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