Sales people are/were pushed/intimidated ( insert your own verbs and tense here ) to sell what execs said was deliverable .
a ) the sole exec motivation was their bonus
b ) the rep got screwed in the commissions
After a few such iterations , IBM was inadvertently actively "training" ( in the Pavlovian sense ) sales people to sell stuff "undeliverable" , Besides , the reps wouldn't be compensated anyway .
They pretend to "lead" , we pretend to "follow" .
I'd say : "working as designed"
Now ,,, as for the moronity of the designer ... that's another story . What was her name again ?