A View from Beneath the Dancing Elephant: Preface

Published June 4, 2021
​Updated December 2, 2021

A preface, which is included in the front matter of a book, is the chance for the author to speak directly to his or her reader about why the book was written, what it's about, and why it's important.

This is the Preface from A View from Beneath the Dancing Elephant.

Preface from "A View from Beneath the Dancing Elephant"

Preface to A View from Beneath the Dancing Elephant

• The Executive Team Has Stopped Listening to Their Employees
• Why So Many Divergent Views on Louis V. Gerstner?
• IBM Has Lost Its Internal Sense of Community​​

The Executive Team Has Stopped Listening to Their Employees

If the Watsons still ran IBM, this book would never have seen the light of day. I would have mailed it directly to Tom Watson Sr. or his son and then retired knowing they would act. Unfortunately, IBM’s twenty-first-century leadership, so far, has not inspired such trust and confidence. The twentieth-century IBM believed in the integrity of the individual. It created the world’s first corporate constitution and defined global social responsibility. The twenty-first-century IBM has misplaced all of these and has lost its culture, its constitution and its way.

IBM stands as one of the world’s most representative corporate social ecologies. If it were a city, its representation from 175 countries would make it one of the world’s most educated and ethnically diverse. Its population would place it in the top forty cities of the United States and Brazil, the top ten of Malaysia, the top five of France and the top two of Romania or Norway.

In the short time frame from conception to realization of this book, this corporate metropolis expanded 20%, from 341,279 employees to 405,535, then contracted 30% to 278,039, only to grow again by 70% to a historic peak of 466,995. The strain this would put on any social infrastructure is unimaginable. Therefore, although economics may write headlines, we must push past just an economic evaluation. It was a century-old social network that held IBM together, and that’s what we must study to assess its future.

Why So Many Divergent Views on Louis V. Gerstner?

Although my opinion is only one of many, I have interviewed thousands of IBM employees over my thirty-year IBM career. We are an opinionated bunch, and our perspectives on change at IBM are as diverse as the company is old. I dislike stereotypes, and I believe that "the only true generalization is that all generalizations are false." But there are similarities in IBMers’ views.

​There are three distinct generations of IBMers when it comes to evaluating Louis V. Gerstner.

• The Elder Generation retired before the mid-nineties. Its members had long careers and experienced the IBM Basic Beliefs as the Watsons intended. This generation’s CEOs culturally imbedded the IBM Basic Beliefs through Open Doors, Speak Up!s, Executive Interviews, Opinion Surveys and exemplary first-line management training. These IBMers had most of their retirement invested in IBM stock and its defined-benefit pension plan, and they were grateful that Louis V. Gerstner Jr. took over for John Akers as CEO, because IBM’s corporate bankruptcy would have meant their personal bankruptcy. When they hear the newest generation of IBMers caution others to think carefully before adding IBM to their employment short list, many wonder why.

 

• The Transition Generation was hired in the late sixties to mid-eighties. Tom Watson Jr. still wandered the halls of Armonk, talking directly with many of them. They have experienced a range of IBM leaders, good and bad: from Watson Jr., Learson and Cary, to Opel, Akers, Gerstner, Palmisano and Rometty. An adaptable group, this generation includes everyone from those who built the first mainframe to those hired to construct the Hundred Billion Dollar IBM. They have experienced the Basic Beliefs, but also the ongoing changes in pension and health benefits, resource actions and financial impacts around IBM’s earnings-per-share road maps. Some have survived thirty-plus years like the elder generation, but most have not.

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• The Younger Generation joined after the IBM recovery in the early nineties, and they have never experienced the IBM Basic Beliefs except on isolated teams. Many accept as fact what Gerstner wrote in Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?—that “Respect for the Individual came to mean that an IBMer could do pretty much anything he or she wanted to do, within the broad HR and legal rulebooks, with little or no accountability.” They see the new corporate workplace as just a fact of life: many corporations have quarterly resource actions, minimal pay increases, regular job-hopping and little correlation between pay and performance. Why expect anything different? They view the Watsons’ IBM as an archaic, wistful dream of old men.

Once upon a time, IBM’s Basic Beliefs were the corporate constitution that bounded all of Big Blue’s decisions. The elder generation sees them as principles that encouraged independent thought and empowered action. The new generation, if they are even aware of them, sees them as nice words and not much else. The transition generation lives with their loss.
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This book is just one perspective, humbly offered, from a member of the transition generation.

IBM Has Lost Its Internal Sense of Community

Peter F. Drucker once leveraged an eighteen-month study of General Motors to become one of the preeminent management philosophers of the twentieth century. Decades earlier, Tom Watson Sr. had already utilized an uncanny sense of community to achieve the same ends. I offer the insights in this book as an addendum to Drucker’s work because we need more servants of business—and fewer masters.

Change occurs slowly in a society of a half million people. Change may impact one generation but not the next; change may affect one geography and no other; or change may divide executive and employee. But universally, the Basic Beliefs no longer unite generations of IBMers. This is the century’s most significant change.

A View from Beneath the Dancing Elephant: Rediscovering IBM's Corporate Constitution is an IBM employee's perspective of today's IBM. If Lou Gerstner’s Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? is the yang, this book is the yin—that quintessential opposing and balancing force. It is an IBM employee-owner’s perspective. It captures the views of those that will determine IBM’s 21st Century permanence.

What is the premise of this second book by Peter E. Greulich?

IBM must rediscover its Corporate Constitution—its basic beliefs of Respect for the Individual, Service to the Customer and the Pursuit of Excellence.

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