Conference 7.286::digital

If you do a DIR/AUTH=LENNARD in this notes conference you may find
a quote of his that applies:



'Death Spiral'

Lee

p.s. Dick Lennard was TFSO'd a while back.

    
    
    No, Dick took the SERP that was offered a few years ago.  His 'the
    death spiral continues' and Mike Smith's 'the living shall envy the
    dead' will live in infamy.

    SERP... that's right.
    
    Lee

    What is your point?  Every company cycles up and down.  Mark it 
    down, eventually HP is going to hit the wall and cycle down.  
    If we do nothing we sink faster.  
      

    My point? On the top of my head. 8^) Sure, this happens here, there and
    everywhere. But does it have to? We claim to have excellent product
    line, and services, and it's true consolidation of some areas is long
    overdue, but when it is to the point of we are loosing customers, and
    also the valuable resoures of expensively trained individuals to other
    companies, whether TFSO's, or they see they can leave by their own
    volition, before the ship sinks out of sight, isn't this self defeating?
    
    Sometimes the "logic" of this company isn't visable. But then, I am
    only an employee who listens to the views of others, and then form my
    own opinion. I'm not trained in the "politics of business", so
    therefore I am capable of drawing wrong conclusions. If I learn
    something from this effort to state my view, then that is good. If
    someone else learns something from this, then even better. Thanks for
    the encouragement to further state my opinion.
    
    Bob

    
    
    RE: .4  Well we've been waiting for the cycle to turn fo a while now,
    it's long overdue.  We seemed content for a long while to sit on our
    hands and wait for it to happen on it's own.  It has not and will not
    unless we take concrete, substantive action to assist the upswing.
    
    
    Mike
    

    Re: all of the above
    
    See Wall Street Journal, January 25, 1994, Section B, Page 10.
    
    Recognize any of the names?  Remember Product Lines into SBU's/AMC's,
    into Demise of OEM business for End User focus, into industry then
    applications marketing, into CBU's, into ...
    
    Activity is not achievement.  The legacy of Shield, Smith, Olsen,...,
    lives on.
    

   >>>> Activity is not achievement

   John Rollwagen, CEO of Cray Research was briefly in Washington on
   a Clinton Job and subsequently quit.

   He writes in a magazine article that he came across a "Management By
   Objectives" document that was generated by the Department of Commerce
   in Washington. He could not find any clear objectives in the two-inch
   thick manual except in one place, somebody had compared the thirty
   meetings they had as opposed to twenty meetings the previous year
   thereby citing an improvement of almost 50%.  :-) :-)

   Hey! Who said we should be measured by Wall Street. We'll make our
   own metrics. ;-)

   Nari

    I am right down the road from UNISYS HQ.  UNISYS is beginning to
    emerge as a profitable and reasonably focused company.  The cycle
    was extremely long and ugly.  Living close to the situation and 
    reading about it in the local papers was instructive.  THEY TRIED
    EVERYTHING!  New plans.  New structure.  MASSIVE layoffs.  What
    brought them back?  The cycled down or shrunk to a point where the
    only thing left was that which the customer really wanted and needed
    from them.  They eventually found themselves where every company
    needs to be, in a position where the customer NEEDS them.  
    
    Question:  What does Digital offer that customers really want and
               need?
    
    If Digital honestly answers this question, we would be able to
    identify a foundation on which we can build.  
    
    Facts:  If this question were answered honestly, our headcount
            would shrink to about 40K and yes overall revenue would
            drop.  However, the revenue we would bring in would be
            very profitable.   

>    Facts:  If this question were answered honestly, our headcount
>            would shrink to about 40K and yes overall revenue would
>            drop.  However, the revenue we would bring in would be
>            very profitable.

Ok, makes sense, but, if we don't have the products/services that the customer
wants/needs, then perhaps we should develop/improve on new/existing products/
services, and eliminating the people that contribute to such things is IMHO,
not the way to do it. What happened to brainstorming, a tool I learned years 
ago in a Basic problem solving class? The less brains with which to storm with,
the lesser the potential. There is strength in numbers. And if our valuable
contributors are let go, and go to the competitors, we increase their numbers,
and their strength.

Bob

    re -.2
    
    Unisys also happens to be the current "system of choice" for the
    government, giving them a single huge client and keeping them afloat.
    I doubt they're alive because they discovered what the client
    wanted.  UNISYS is not a big commercial success and few canned
    applications run on it.

    Well, Unisys also went through the dwindling income and downsizing
    cycle long enough to make it necessary to get rid of the "career
    managers".  Digital is not unlike lots of other large companies.  We
    have a lot of people who work hard trying to make a contribution, and
    we have some people who manage their own careers.  Lets face it, if
    your are out there trying to work and make a contribution, you aren't
    able to and not inclined to spend a lot of time managing your career. 
    When the cutters make the cuts, often it seems that those who are
    managing their careers have an advantage.  And, unfortunately, lots of
    those who do so well at managing their careers make some pretty big
    bucks.  
    
    When you think about your contribution to the Corporation and the
    bottom line, you must think about how much profit you are generating
    after deducting your compensation and the overhead which supports you. 
    Profit means dollars.  Profit doesn't result from reports or meetings
    or memo's.  
    
    So in the cycle or spiral or whatever, isn't it great to reflect on
    those 100K buck a year folks who are managing their careers while you
    are out there wasting your time on revenue?

    :.9
    
    Identify what the customer wants and shrink to 40K employees?  I have
    no argument that this is not the correct number, but I would like an
    explanation of where your came across the figure.
    
    In addition, with such a figure in mind, is it perhaps possible the
    same resoure has an idea what areas digital should concentrate on?
    
    thanks.

    re .12
     	Hear, hear on "career management".  It is disheartening to 
    	continually see the same cast of characters popping again
    	and again, in different places, when you know darn well of
    	their "reputations" and "contributions".
    
    re. 13
    	Give the guy a break, eh?  40K was merely an example, to be
    	conversational, you know?
     
    	

    re .14
    
    Actually, I wasn't trying to be harsh.  I've recently been told by a
    fellow worker that he read an article (don't know where) that said the
    optimum digital employee count would be 50K.  In addition, an article
    in last weeks Colo. Springs paper stated digital would lay-off 20K more
    during the next fiscal yr.  (would that put us around either of these
    two figures?)
    
    My curiosity in the figures comes from wanting to know:
    
    a.  how the numbers are determined.
    
    b.  the people who make these determinations must also be attempting to
    	determine the business line(s) digital would then do best at.
    	If so, I'd like to know and then, even though several people think
    	it offensive, plan a career to take that track.  (yes, plan a	
    	career, i.e., take an active role in what happens to me in my 
    	professional life.)
    
    
    
    
    	

What are all these snipes about people who manage their careers? Who else 
is going to do it? You owe to yourselves and your families to do it. 
Managing your career and being 100% committed to your job are not mutually
exclusive.

Dave.

    	In a recent PBS show on Business excellence the following struck
    me as Digital's problem.
    	I paraphrase:
    	It amazes me how some corporations think they can get closer to
    	the customer by cutting out the bottom layer in a 7-layer
    	structure.
    
    	Digital is going to wind up with all chiefs and no indians.
    		dick

>What are all these snipes about people who manage their careers?  

I think the term is being used as a euphemism for people who
spend all their time "managing their careers" and no time at
all doing anything that the rest of us would consider useful
or productive.

    <snipes about managing careers...
    
    People who "manage their careers" as alluded to earlier are not just
    the vast majority of us who are looking out for ourselves in addition
    to doing our jobs as well as we can.
    
    These people are more often described as those who spend their careers
    "managing up" instead of "managing down".  In other words, they spend
    their lives playing politics inside large organizations like Digital's. 
    Because it is nearly impossible to rise within an organization like
    Digital's without having visibility to the appropriate upper management
    types, these people spend their time determining who they need to be
    close to in order to rise within the organization.  This behavior is in
    no way consistent (although on an individual basis it occasionally
    occurs)  with doing one's job at the 100% level.
    
    One need only see the large percentage of former personnel or finance
    people who rise within the company, as opposed to former sales or
    engineering people.  You see, the former have more time and more access
    to upper management.  Field and design people are typically too tied up
    with customers and projects to be able to efficiently network with the
    right people.  I am by no means being critical of people who happen to
    work in finance or personnel; it's just a simple observation.
    
    The problem within large companies of having career "up-managers"
    proliferate within management has been documented in numerous books and
    magazine articles that have analyzed the business problems of large
    organizations.  And most of know who these people are within Digital
    (and who these people are who may have recently left!) at all levels!
                                                              

    RE: .12
    
    	Your point is well taken!
    
    RE: .19
    
    	Excellent clarification of the point made in .12.  
    
    
    	A trend within Digital to succeed by effectively "managing one's 
    career" as opposed to effectively managing Digital's assets, employees,
    and/or business interests is a major cause of Digital's problems. AND
    this point cannot be argued by the intelligent!
                                               

    
    I call it the 'Horse' and 'Jockey' syndrome.
    
    In some organizations one is 'picked' as a 'Jockey' from
    On High. Usually this involves issues of being politically 
    malleable, and deemed unlikely to be a threat to those at the top.
    
    If you are a valuable direct  contributor, who gets the job done and
    derive satisfaction from a piece of engineering well done, then you are
    a 'Horse'. And a Horse you shall ever be. You are too valuable to the
    Jockeys as a 'Horse'.  
    
    Jockeys ride the backs of Horses, and unlike the real world, 'win' 
    at the DEC, er DIGITAL game regardless of the effort of their Horses.
    If horses fail, they don't get a chance to run again. Jockeys get 
    promoted anyway, since it was the Horses fault, after all.
    
    I've seen a few Jockeys who threatened to grow beyond the manager who 
    picked them fall from grace, but never, in all my 15 years have I ever
    seen a 'Horse' become a 'Jockey'.
    
    Lately we've been losing good Horses to other companies with
    opprotunities where excellence matters. I wonder  when we are down
    another 20k heads during the course of this year if we will not have a
    shortage of horses, and a surplus of Jockeys to ride them.
    
    R 
    
    As another Noter's Personal Name says:
    "Rode Hard. Put up Wet."