You make good points, and provide good details. Thank you. I'll add around that. Based on a book or two I read on IBM at the time under Gerstner,
- talked to the top 50 or 100 customers to learn what IBM was good at, and sucked at. From this he learned that IBM's weird nomenclature and incompatibility with other LANs, disks, etc.. sucked. He learned IBM was a bit lost in its own world. Perhaps more critically written as entitled. IBM worked on fixing it. On the good side he learned customers like IBM for consulting/out-sourcing of projects. Whether apps, LANs, O/S, storage one at a time or all at the same time, IBM did it all and decently well. Customers had one guy to thank (when things good) or yell at (when things went wrong). Customer's prefer that over dealing with 4 different specialist companies they then had to corall onto the same page with attendant billing isssues. Insane costs for mainframes was another "IBM sucks".
- These points taken together is why Gerstner decided to not split IBM up, which is what the out-going CEO (Akron?) suggested. At the time specialist firms in printing, disk, LANs, etc were progressing faster than IBM. It was thought splitting IBM and selling off divisions might make those divisions more competitive and allow what remained to be more profitable.
- Learned that IBM had some good ideas that died in corporate American BS of meetings. Example: IBM had a manufacturing plan to reduce the costs of mainframes. When he found out never done, he got that going, and did something about removing the cruft of Corp America politics and nonsense that chokes out good ideas.
- IBM also got lucky that the internet era (think B2B) needed high capacity HW. Mainframes were key. They had the horsepower. IBM moved MSRP down, and made a lot of money at the same time.
- Gerstner was firm but fair. When he came in he said IBM's financial situation was dire. He said there'd be layoff's but once done, IBM would tend to not do more. So whoever was left was wanted, and was needed to make IBM better. That was both a like of remaining employees, a warm thanks to those who were left, and a warning, and an attempt to remove fear of firings in the future. Be here and be real or get lost. He sold off art, and real-estate to raise cash.
- talked to the top 50 or 100 customers to learn what IBM was good at, and sucked at. From this he learned that IBM's weird nomenclature and incompatibility with other LANs, disks, etc.. sucked. He learned IBM was a bit lost in its own world. Perhaps more critically written as entitled. IBM worked on fixing it. On the good side he learned customers like IBM for consulting/out-sourcing of projects. Whether apps, LANs, O/S, storage one at a time or all at the same time, IBM did it all and decently well. Customers had one guy to thank (when things good) or yell at (when things went wrong). Customer's prefer that over dealing with 4 different specialist companies they then had to corall onto the same page with attendant billing isssues. Insane costs for mainframes was another "IBM sucks".
- These points taken together is why Gerstner decided to not split IBM up, which is what the out-going CEO (Akron?) suggested. At the time specialist firms in printing, disk, LANs, etc were progressing faster than IBM. It was thought splitting IBM and selling off divisions might make those divisions more competitive and allow what remained to be more profitable.
- Learned that IBM had some good ideas that died in corporate American BS of meetings. Example: IBM had a manufacturing plan to reduce the costs of mainframes. When he found out never done, he got that going, and did something about removing the cruft of Corp America politics and nonsense that chokes out good ideas.
- IBM also got lucky that the internet era (think B2B) needed high capacity HW. Mainframes were key. They had the horsepower. IBM moved MSRP down, and made a lot of money at the same time.
- Gerstner was firm but fair. When he came in he said IBM's financial situation was dire. He said there'd be layoff's but once done, IBM would tend to not do more. So whoever was left was wanted, and was needed to make IBM better. That was both a like of remaining employees, a warm thanks to those who were left, and a warning, and an attempt to remove fear of firings in the future. Be here and be real or get lost. He sold off art, and real-estate to raise cash.