Articles from Corporate History
Published June 4, 2021
Updated June 7, 2021
These are articles outside of Pete's usual focus on IBM. As he studies the history of Corporate America and some of its greatest industrialists, he also studies the historical context and the industrial and political leaders of the day. Sometimes, he writes about these events, leaders and human relation practices.

He, like Ida M. Tarbell (The Rising of the Tide: The Story of Sabinsport) and Ray Stannard Baker (aka David Grayson), would also like to find a way to communicate his beliefs and his love of life through fiction. This is his Ol' Men Talkin' Series. If you want to understand Peter E. Greulich's character this landing page and the articles it points to will take you there.

​If you prefer to read specifically about IBM, select the "21ST CENTURY IBM" or "20TH CENTURY IBM" or the applicable menu item above.
The stories in this section can be accessed from the "ARTICLES + CORPORATE ARTICLES" menu items above or ​by selecting one of the menu buttons below which are supported with additional descriptive text.
 Corporate 101 Articles: Lessons from Corporate History
If a corporation wants to acquire and keep the best-of-the-best employees, it needs to move benefit offerings to higher psychological or self-fulfillment levels. Is your company a basic-needs or high-performance organization?

IBM was a high-performance organization!
Chief executives need to master the "Art of a John H. Patterson Restart." They need to seek new perspectives by figuratively moving their desks out onto their knowledge-industry production floors. Tom Peters tagged it management by wandering around (MBWA).

John H. Patterson wandered. Do you?
Under Tom Watson Sr.’s leadership, IBM weathered ten major economic declines, three major wars, and four of the six largest declines in U.S. stock market history. It takes humility to learn from the past! Is humility one of your leadership traits?

​Then learn from Tom Watson Sr.'s mistakes.
Strategy and culture are intimate dance partners. In any given situation either may lead. If implemented well, culture will cover strategy’s missteps and both will magnify the other’s successes.

​Do you have such intimate dance partners?
Watson Jr. embodied the principles of his father in a new scalable way. Using three words as a corporate constitution, he decentralized the corporation yet maintained control and a deep insight into the organization.

Can three words summarize your culture?
Two men from different backgrounds founded two companies: business machines and retail. These two men seemed unlikely kindred spirits. Yet, theirs were two of the 20th Century's great corporate brands.

Could one rule guide your corporation?
"When any man tells you that one man alone can do a big job, he knows he is not telling the truth." Tom Watson built a great 20th Century brand. Here are his thoughts.

Are you going it alone? You shouldn't be!
​FORTUNE called it “IBM’s $5,000,000,000 Gamble.” To deliver the mainframe, IBM invested two and one-half times what the U.S. spent to build the atomic bomb. Some have called it luck!

Luck, maybe; but it wasn't by chance.
Following his father’s death and now IBM’s Chief Executive Officer, Watson Jr. acted. He called a meeting in historic Williamsburg, Virginia and started building his IBM.

How can you kick start your corporation?
How important is selling to a corporation? To answer this question, ask, “How important is it for a car to move?” Too many analysts forget to consider this: “Can a corporation move product?"

​Is your corporate car moving or broken down?
In a word, the worth of a great chief executive officer is priceless. Such chief executives know that corporate survival and long-term adaptability is about business-first: people, processes and products.

IBM's employees believed this once!
​Employees can be chameleons when threatened: they blend into their surroundings. The last thing a chief executive needs is a company full of employee-chameleons.

How do you get them to let their guard down?
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