IBM STORIES

Did I ever tell you the story about ...? I have been accused of speaking in parables and must admit that I enjoy collecting and telling stories.  In fact one of the greatest pleasures of being a College Professor was that I had a captive audience for telling my stories.  Here I would like to share with you a collection of stories that are IBM related.  Most of my IBM stories are true or at least based on true circumstances.   To paraphrase one of my favorite preachers, "I have been known to put a little hair on my stories."  Most of my stories are allegorical in nature.   Although often the characters are not symbolic or fictional figures but are generally real people that actually participated in the story.

Bag of Cashews

This story was told to me by an IBM colleague by the name of George Cone.   George knew a person that worked in Armonk at the IBM World Headquarters that tells this as a true story.  This fellow in Armonk had in addition to all of his other duties a unique annual assignment.  It seems in days long since past that IBM would serve a box lunch at the IBM Stockholder's Meeting.  Now as in every corporation the Stockholders are next to divine and must be treated at least as royalty.  This fellow's annual assignment was to plan the Stockholder Meeting box lunches.  Each year he would plan the menu and the box it would reside in several weeks before the planned Stockholder's Meeting.  He would prepare a couple of sample box lunches and the top corporate executives would meet for lunch and eat, critique and approve the sample box lunches.

Each year the executives would attack the box lunch with much the same vigor they attacked corporate proposals.  "What?  Chicken?  Didn't we have that last year?".  "Ham?  Aren't a lot of our stockholders Jewish?   They might be offended.  Indeed, some wouldn't even be able to eat it".   "The stockholder's meeting is in Dallas, Texas, shouldn't we have beef?"

If enough time was left they would often attack the box itself.   "Too simple!!  What a drab box!!  Can't we get something that looks good?"  Or, what a fancy box!  Won't this give our stockholders the impression we are overly extravagant?  The executives would complete the meal having found everything wrong with the proposed box lunch and send George's friend back to the drawing board without much if any guidance except they didn't like it.

Then one year this headquarters staff worker made the sample box lunches that was tied neatly in a ribbon.  As an afterthought he tied  a bag of cashews on the outside of the box.  The story as told to me was the two executives that dined on the sample box lunch were CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr.  and President T.V. Learson, both giants and very tough gentlemen in those early IBM days.

When the two executives spotted the bag of cashews they immediately attacked!

"What is this?"

"A bag of cashews, you know ... soup to nuts?  After the stockholders complete their meal, they can finish up on the cashew nuts."

"But, aren't cashews expensive nuts?  The stockholders might think we are too extravagant.", said one of the executives. 

"But, on the other hand it is a nice touch" argued the other executive.

The end result being that the executives spent the whole time arguing about the bag of nuts and never focused on what was on the inside of the box or even the box itself.   When they were leaving they left orders to forget the cashews.

Of course the moral to this story is when dealing with tough executives, give them a bag of cashews to focus on, take apart and throw out while the rest of your proposal remains intact.

For the next couple of stories I need to set the stage.  Several years ago I read a book titled, "After IBM".  The theme of this book was that large industrial companies have moved through two stages of management systems and are now moving into the current third stage.  The book used IBM as an example of this movement through the first two stages and thus the title, "After IBM".   The first stage was the Autocracy stage.  These were the early stages of many large companies.  The IBM company's management system was clearly an Autocracy.  The single person having unlimited power at IBM was its founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr.  Although IBM was a large company, Tom Watson, Sr. was the first line manager for the whole company.  He made all the decisions.  Indeed, it was true also of the NCR company founded by John Henry Patterson where Tom Watson Sr. received his training,  rising from clerk to sales executive.

John Patterson was also an autocrat and some felt a tyrant.  One story is that Patterson's favorite method of firing executives was to have their furniture put on the front lawn and set afire.  It is said that Patterson fired Watson, Sr. several times and had his office furniture piled on the front lawn and set afire.  The story is that Watson, Sr. just walked around the fire and went on in to work.  (I am not sure what he used for furniture, but being an entrepreneur, I am sure he managed.) 

I will not dwell much more on NCR, except to say that Patterson trained an impressive number of executives in his business methods and philosophies. When these executives left the company or, as happened more frequently, were fired, their training went with them. In the period 1910-1930 an estimated one-sixth of the top executives in the nation's companies were former NCR executives and Tom Watson, Sr. was one of them.   Indeed, many of IBM's personnel policies were fashioned from the NCR personnel policies.  For more very interesting NCR history go to: http://www3.ncr.com/history/jhp/jhp.htm

Now with that background, let's have a couple of IBM stories from the Autocratic days of Tom Watson, Sr.

IBM Punched Card Size

The medium of the IBM Accounting Machines was the 80 column punched card.  These machines were often referred to as PCAM, Punched Card Accounting Machines.  There is one story that the size of the punched card was designed to fit in the surplus filing cabinets built for the older larger dollar bill that was being phased out.  I understand that this myth has now been proven untrue. 

The punched cards were all the same size but had different colors and corner cuts to be able to distinguish different types of data.  Some even had printing on the front.  The story is that pictures of these cards were printed in sales brochures.  When shown a sample sales brochure for his approval prior to printing,  Watson Sr. said don't photo reduce the picture of the card.  This quickly became an IBM policy that all pictures of IBM punched cards must be shown in full size.

One day a brave soul had the courage to ask Mr. Watson, why he had established this policy.  Mr. Watson denied having made such a policy.  On further investigation it was found that when Mr. Watson had given the order for the particular sales brochure, he meant that the printing on the card was hard to read if it was photo reduced.

The moral?  Isn't it interesting how an autocrat's words can be misinterpreted and become policy?  Don't always believe that the company's policies and procedures are inviolate.

YOU CAN'T ARGUE WITH SUCCESS

This story is to have taken place during the Tom Watson Senior's autocratic days.  Mr. Watson Sr. would visit each IBM branch office and confer with the branch manager.  Now in the old days the position of IBM Branch Manager was a fiefdom.  It was a coveted position and if you did well, you were on your way to becoming an IBM executive.  Until very recently, almost all high level executive positions in IBM were filled with former IBM salesmen who had spent time as an IBM Marketing Branch Manager.

The story goes that Mr. Watson paid a call on this particular branch manager and asked him how things were going.  Of course the branch manager gave T. J. a briefing on how he was doing "number-wise".  After his briefing the branch manager told Mr. Watson that he did have one problem that perhaps Mr. Watson could help with. 

"I have this one salesman that is being very insubordinate with me", says the branch manager.

"How is that?" asked Mr. Watson.

"Well, he told me to go sh-- in my hat", says the branch manager.  (A hat was a required business clothing attire in those days)

"Really! now that is being insubordinate, tell me some more about him", said Mr. Watson.  "How is his record?"

"Well", says the branch manager, "Last year he finished at 500% of quota".

"Oh, really", says Mr. Watson.  "How is he doing this year?"

"We doubled his quota and by March of this year he was already 300% of quota for the entire year", said the branch manager.

"What should I do with this guy, Tom?"

Mr. Watson's reply was, "I think you better go buy yourself a new hat".

The moral to this story of course is if you were successful at your job at IBM, you can get by with almost any behavior.

Singing Songs

I joined IBM in 1963 in Poughkeepsie, NY.  This was the early of days of an anti-establishment sentiment in this country.  Wasn't there a saying, "Never trust anyone over thirty"?  Even though our nation was changing, IBM still had many of its paternalistic practices.  Some of them were country clubs, IBM Family dinners, employee stock purchase plans and of course the Full Employment Policy.   Even though IBM was slow to change, I would hear other older IBMers talking about the good old days.  One good old day practice that I heard of was that of employees singing songs.  It seems that some employees were members of the local IBM band and were given time off from work to practice.  Periodically all the employees at a particular site would meet for various business announcements, employee recognition, etc.  At these meetings the band would play and the group would sing songs. 

I remember driving from Poughkeepsie to Endicott, NY with several of my department members.  Now recall that Endicott was the original home of the IBM corporation.  The drive is a nice drive in the summer time with some very beautiful countryside views.  Of course in the winter time, you took your chances.  One of the car's occupants was Ed Zirel.  Ed had been with IBM for several years (fifteen to twenty years at least).  As we drove along, the conversation turned to IBM and of course the good old days. 

I asked Ed about the practice of singing songs which most of us thought was a pretty stupid practice.  Ed said that when he joined the company he thought it was kind of dumb too.  But, he recalled in his early days discussing this song singing with another IBMer who had been with the company many years.  When Ed questioned the old fellow about the song singing practice, the old timer replied, "Son, as long as the stock keeps going up, I'll sing".  To this story I always add, "You know, we stopped singing and sure enough the stock quit going up".

I recall asking Ed, what songs did they sing?  He said that it was mostly whatever was popular at the time.  He also said that there were some IBM songs.  

"IBM songs?", I asked.

"Oh, yes, songs about IBM", he said.

Well, as it turned out the trip to Endicott was to meet with some people there about system testing OS/360.  I was at the time the System Test Manager for OS/360.   The meeting room was the old band room where the IBM band used to practice.   During a break in the meeting I browsed around and found the sheet music and lyrics for one of the IBM songs.  Here are the lyrics.

EVER ONWARD, IBM

There's a thrill in store for all
For we're about to toast
The corporation that we represent.
We're here to cheer each pioneer and also proudly boast,
Of that man of men, our sterling president
The name of T. J. Watson means a courage none can stem
And we feel honored to be here to toast the I-B-M

Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
That's the spirit that has brought us fame.
We're big but bigger we will be.
We can't fail for all can see, that serve humanity
Has been our aim.
Our products now are known in every zone.
Our reputation sparkles like a gem.
We've fought our way through
And new fields we're sure to conquer, too.
For the ever onward I-B-M!

Ever onward! Ever Onward!
We're bound for the top to never fall
Fight here and now we thankfully
Pledge sincerest loyalty
To the corporation that's the best of all.
Our leaders we revere and while we're here,
Let's show the world just what we think of them!
So let us sing men -- sing men
Once or twice, then sing again
For the ever onward I-B-M!

You can see that a group of IBMers could really get worked up after singing a fight song like this.  Curiously, several years later, the Japanese companies established their Quality Circle groups.  The groups would meet and sing songs while doing calisthenics.  I wonder if they sang "Ever onward Fujitsu"?   Whatever they sang, we all recall the highly successful growth of  Japanese companies and the Japanese economy.

Employee Image

This story is to have occurred in Endicott, NY.  (I spent a summer there one week.) 
The story goes that these two fellows were standing on the sidewalk across the street from an IBM building in Endicott.  One of the fellows being new to Endicott asked, " what kind of Catholic Institution is that across the street. ?"

His companion told him that was an IBM facility and asked, "Why did you think it was a Catholic Institution?"

The fellow responded, "Well the people are always crossing themselves before they go into the building".

His companion responded, "Oh no, they are checking their attire.  Hat, badge and fly zipped"

More on IBM Attire

I recall one of my first impression of the IBM uniform.   I was a second lieutenant in the USAF programming an IBM 705 in Autocoder (now called Assembler) at Norton AFB in San Bernardino, California.  We had one of the first high speed matrix printers, an IBM 720.  Now in those days we hadn't yet invented spooling, nor even multi-programming.  Everyone knows that one of the slowest things a computer does is to print.  Even 1000 lines a minute printers took little CPU time.  So, we solved the problem partly by having the mainframe produce the reports on magnetic tape and take the tape to the off-line tape-to-print operation which involved a tape drive, a printer and a control unit.

Now the IBM 720 printer was new and printed at a blazing speed of 500 lines a minute.  But, like a lot of new mechanical devices it had problems,   not the least of which was the paper stacker.  But, this printer seemed to have all kinds of problems.  IBM provided on-site CEs (Customer Engineers) that were trained to some degree on all the equipment at the site.  In those days the on-site maintenance was included in the price of the hardware.  No billable, non-billable issues to worry about.

When the local CEs couldn't get this darn printer to work, they called in the district representative that had more training and experience with the device.   The district representative couldn't get it going either.  So, they called in the regional representative that really qualified to fix the darn thing. 

I happened to be near the printer when the regional rep came in.  He was one of the nattiest dressed IBMer I had seen.  He had on the traditional IBM three-piece suit, power tie, wing-tip shoes with a button-down oxford cloth white shirt with cuff-links and he was carrying a nice looking attaché case.  He took off his hat and suit coat and laid them aside, took out his cuff-links and rolled up his French cuffs and opened the attaché case.  It was a tool box.  He proceeded to work on this printer that had oil and grease on the moving parts which soon was covering his hands up to but not getting on his French cuffs.  He put the printer back together, cleaned his hands with a rag from the toolbox (attaché case), rolled down his French cuffs, put in the cuff-links and donned his suit coat and hat and left.  I was impressed!!   By the way, the printer worked too. (For a while at least).

Bureaucracy (Not really an IBM story, but it fits)

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced his altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but Idon't know where I am."

The woman replied, "You are in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 58 and 59 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an IT professional," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the woman. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you have been no help so far.

"You must be a corporate executive," the woman responded.

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the woman, "You don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is, you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but somehow, it's now my fault."

MORE TO COME

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