How to reward an IBM exec for lower sales and shrinking profits? Promotion IBM’s UK overlord David Stokes is getting his just deserts for presiding over a sustained period of sliding sales and plummeting profits - he’s being promoted. Stokes, who became CEO for IBM’s British business at the start of 2013, is set to be made chief operating officer for Europe on 22 May, IBM confirmed in a brief …
When I was at IBM many moons ago, one year, my sales quota (even though I was in the lab) was 7.8 million. I did 8.5 in contracted revenue and ended at 120% of quota in terms of burned revenue.
I also did a deal that sparked the creation of a cross pillar services offering. After being tasked with an impossible job and then crushing it, they replaced me with a green team and a heritage IBM manager.
I warned them that they would fail, but they didn't care or listen. It took them 3 years to admit I was right, but by then... I escaped the borg.
So I feel your pain.
What you're seeing is one of the reasons why IBM has difficulty in implementing change, and why Rometty has to go to extremes to try and turn things around. And of course why she'll fail.
IBM is still making money, but they need to get a real shock to the system in order to turn things around.
But its going to be very difficult to do that when IBM is 1) a public company and 2) will cause the clueless masses a major heart attack as you reverse course on a lot of things.
This was very common at IBM at the executive levels. Basically the executives were, and probably are, bounced around from position to position every few years, occasionally they were promotions and more often just pseudo lateral moves. It was somewhat of an issue as no one was ever around long enough to see their strategy succeed or not succeed. People did things, knowing that when the results were fully understood that they would likely be off to some other role. Probably a pretty common issue in large businesses. Complacency of managers because results cannot really be pinned to them and what really matters is politicking.
"IBM’s UK overlord David Stokes is getting his just deserts for presiding over a sustained period of sliding sales and plummeting profits - he’s being promoted." Really??
"It is now 21 straight quarters since IBM last grew its top and bottom lines, and the constant reshaping of the workforce - a polite way of referring to repeated redundancies - has affected staff morale, as have orders to cut back on remote working for some and basic travel expenses."
Yea. Ok. Way to go, IBM. So, you laid people off in order to afford promoting this clown and upping his pay? Outstanding. NOT.
...the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. There's an old joke that the last three stages of any project are Search for the Guilty; Punishment of the Innocent; Promotion of the non-participants.
In IBM's case the last stage was long ago replaced by "Rotation of the executives".
A colleague of mine used to be in an IBM unit which manged to lose $360M in a single year. And there were only 60 of them. His point was that IBM could have given them a $1M each, told them all to fuck off, and come out $300M ahead and everyone would have been happy ..... No. Of course not.
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