Lessons learned from IBM

I confess, I never worked for IBM.  Not that I didn’t want to.  I have submitted applications over the years for various positions with the company, but, never generated any interest on their side. 

I have, however, learned some valuable lessons from the company over the years that are worth sharing here as a reminder to us all.

1)      Appearance is important

IBM has always insisted that its employees dress appropriately.  The mantra in the ‘70s, which I assume still continues today, is that employees should dress like the CEO of the company they are visiting.  For the most part, that meant dark suit, white shirt, tie, patent leather shoes, etc.  One notable exception at that time involved the garment industry.

Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, New York was the center of a thriving garment industry.  CEOs at those companies typically wore jeans or even shorts to work and IBMers working there were permitted the same.

I think the lesson here is that people respect and will take advise from those who look like them.  You can see that in most corporate board rooms.  Diversity is hard to come by, even in 2014.  Boards continue to be dominated by gray haired white men.

If you want to try an experiment, Google any major corporation and go to the web page that shows the board members.  Cover the titles and see if you can pick out the Chairman or CEO.  Chances are it won’t be easy.

If you want these decision makers to listen to you, it’s best to make sure they feel comfortable with you.

This is a lesson that I tend to forget and need to work harder at.

2)      It isn’t what they ask for

This is a lesson I learned while working at Citibank in the late 1970s.  I took a job in their Foreign Exchange Department managing their back office computer operations.  The bank decided that it was time to upgrade their aging hardware and applications in that area and pulled together a taskforce to find a replacement.

Our team spent countless hours developing a very detailed RFP which specified various performance requirements which we felt were critical in the high volume environment we were in.

For those of you not around in the 1970s or were too young to remember, the computer hardware industry was crowded with players.  In addition to IBM, the competition included Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Prime, Tandem, NEC, and others.

At the time, those of us in the industry all believed that it was all about the platform.  The applications were secondary and derided as SMOP (simple matter of programming).  I think Bill Gates was one of the first to recognize that we had it backwards.

Anyway, we sent our RFP to every hardware manufacturer on the planet.  The results demonstrated something that I will never forget.  Roughly 80% of the companies chose not to bid on the project.  They could not see any way to meet our requirements with the technology they had available to them.  Everyone else, with the exception of IBM submitted detailed proposals on how they could meet our specifications.

IBMs response was an eye opener to me.  They carefully explained how our specifications were wrong and told us what we should be really asking for.  They essentially rewrote our RFP to match their solution.  In the end, even though their proposal was significantly higher than the competition, they won the bid.

IBM recognized that they did not literally have to meet the requirements as spelled out in the RFP.  Instead, they provided a solution that met the business problem we were trying to address.  And, by the way, matched what they could provide!

It is important to recognize what’s behind the question and not necessarily to respond to the question as asked.  By helping clients to redefine the question, it gets to the root of the problem they are trying to solve.

When dealing with your customers, in whatever industry you are in, keep these IBM lessons in mind.  They will help you to be a better business person.