execution of The Middle…
Many of you don’t believe most of these things happened, and I don’t blame you. Unlike now, I didn’t have a camera in my pocket to record video – but boy, if I did 😉 IBM was the Nvidia of the 80’s – growing faster than the US economy, they were without rival in the computer business, literally called Goliath. There had been attempts to break the company up in the 70s through DOJ action, but even that suit was finally discharged without merit, freeing us to innovate and also box customers into “our” view of computing. And yet, like Gulliver, there were the signs of Lilliputians starting to tie us down and slow our progress. Here I was, at 32, running a meeting with Senior VP’s and their staffs — who HATED each other — and my job was to get them to be able to come to SOME agreement that they would go back to their organizations and execute The Middle we agreed to…
… I had grown up with microcomputers, and now it was clear that this trend would not disappear. The idea that you had to go to a “computer room” and hand someone a “deck of cards” had been replaced with a computer you could touch, see, and play with. Having left the IBM team that won the Space Station computers contract, I stepped into a job to help develop high-end supercomputers. Ironically, that had me working primarily with our microcomputer PC division. Our approach used a massive number of smaller microprocessors. Leveraging relationships I had established over the previous 8 years, I was a Trusted Advisor to all parts of IBM. One wanted to execute the PC group. Watching our OWN people damage the profit margins and roadmaps of the Mainframes was getting REALLY irritating to the senior leaders who ran the company…
… questions balance The Middle…
In the first 8 seconds of the Moody’s 6th album A Question of Balance, you know this will be a different experience than the previous offerings. While the lush production and overdubbing were helpful in the studio, they couldn’t easily duplicate the sound on tour. They answered by writing and recording songs that were “mostly” able to be balanced in a live version. Yes, there are still some symphonic parts, but the synthesizer had come far enough that the Mellotron (clumsy and VERY heavy) was replaced. This meant that live shows were now part of the Moody’s best experiences. They also had the core 5 people in place with writing going around the circle without some of the jealousy they saw explode the Beatles and other groups of their friends.
… so one IBM SVP asked me to be “his guy” to bring everyone to The Middle of the open warfare happening. Without noobserved external competition (they were just not looking…), IBM had made internal battles a real artform. At one point, you had to get nearly 100 SVPs to sign off and agree your product could be announced… and anyone would blackball the whole thing. On this day, I was outside ordering Pizza to keep them locked up until we had an agreement. Sitting out in the hallway of a building that looked more like a Bank than a tech company, I thought “…. this cannot continue”…. followed by “… what am I going to do?”
… executing the answers is complex…
My business card at that time was the greatest I ever had. My name, no level, and the group – Special Projects. This was mostly true… we were on one for our Division President, and I realized that the hint of being “Federal” helped . People inside IBM had the illusion that I was doing something for the “intelligence” community so that people would grant me access… and stop asking questions when they were not helpful 😉 And I learned that the sales training worked — get them to talk with questions, REALLY listen without bias... and they would start to trust you. With that trust, you could find The Middle for all the different perspectives that would serve them all. The key was holding your answers and perspectives until after you had learned all you could... getting out of your statements of truth, and using — wait for it…
Questions. It is way easier said than done, but the best trick is to turn your sentences into them. It is all about punctuation – use ? versus a period. Keep working at them until they are simple and give you the enormous insights you need. Repeat. Repeat. As each “side” would speak, I would use the trust I built to bring that side closer to The Middle. Repeat for the other side…and by the end of the day, we had hammered out an agreement that everyone mostly agreed with. They all celebrated with the pizza and departed, leaving me – exhausted from execution…
Sadly, it was a small victory within a much larger war. Within a year of that meeting, IBM had to do something for the first time in their nearly 80-year history: lay off nearly 50,000 people. I wasn’t one of them – I had jumped off the ship that I knew was fatally damaged — from the inside. As we all watch Apple, Google, FaceBook, Nvidia etc, continue to grow without bounds, I return to my days of amazing (and tragic) meetings. A poem ends this Album vs starting it, and the words below are a portion that I think say it better (as always) and leave you with… a Question of Balance.
And he thought of those he angered,
For he was not a violent man,
And he thought of those he hurt
For he was not a cruel man
And he thought of those he frightened
For he was not a evil man,
And he understood.
He understood himself.
Upon this
He saw that when he was of anger
Or knew hurt
Or felt fear,
It was because he was not understanding.
And he learned, compassion.
And with his eye of compassion
He saw his enemies
Like unto himself,
And he learned love.
Then, he was answered.
Just open your eyes, and realize,
The way it’s always been.
Just open your mind and you will find
The way it’s always been.
Just open your heart and that’s a start
