Re: Green Streak -- MIDRANGE-L

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Simon
what does this expression mean?
That's not SELLING, that's simply taking money from a mug punter.

As for business ethics a worldwide policy to impose criminal punishment to
crooked execs might put life back.

IBM's lack of  new ideas to meet customer or marketplace is  point well made



In a message dated 08/04/2002 5:26:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
shc@flybynight.com.au writes:


> Subj: RE: Green Streak
> Date: 08/04/2002 5:26:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time
> From:    shc@flybynight.com.au (Simon Coulter)
> Sender:    midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
> Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:midrange-l@midrange.com";>midrange-l@midrange.com</A>
> To:    midrange-l@midrange.com
>
>
>
>
>
> Hello Mike,
>
> You wrote:
> >If Leif is right, IBM's answer is that I should move to Linux, and then
> >when I get big enough I can buy an iSeries (or whatever) to run it on.
> >Frankly, I don't see why anyone at IBM would think that was intelligent
> >advice.
>
> I don't know how many times I have to say this:  SERVICES, SERVICES,
> SERVICES.  IBM is becoming a services company (as in a company that makes
> money from various services as opposed to a company that provides service
> -- if you get my meaning).  Search the RPG400-L and MIDRANGE-L archives
> for previous comments of mine on this topic.
>
> Unix, WinDOS, and anything else you care to name has more services
> potential than AS/400 simply because they are less easy to use, less easy
> to manage, cost more in the long run, etc.
>
> Mostly this is a management issue.  I have no doubt that most technical
> people are doing their best and believe their products are the best (it's
> just that so many of them don't know any better so they build overly
> complex stuff).  It concerns management on both sides: the customer and
> the vendor.
>
> If I am a computer company with 500 people on staff my primary concern is
> keeping those people generating revenue.  If I sell AS/400's to my
> customers then after the initial sale I never hear from them.   The
> occasional upgrade, a few phone calls, etc.  I must constantly find new
> customers to keep my staff productive.  If I sell my customers on WinDOS
> or Unix then my staff will be doing something for my customers every
> second week (tweaking this, fixing that, installing something else).  My
> staff are not truly productive but they are charging the customer and thus
> generating revenue and that is all a "modern" company is concerned with.
>
> One of Thomas Watson Jr.'s beliefs was "IBM should first take care of
> customer's profits, then should take care of employee's profits, and if
> those two are taken care of then shareholder's profits will be taken care
> of automatically."
>
> What we have now are corporate manager's rewarded with stock options so
> they manage the company according to the stock price because that is in
> their own interest.  The stock price is a reflection of nothing more than
> perceived company profits and as we've all seen recently corporate America
> has been lying, cheating, and fraudulently manipulating its books in order
> to provide unreasonable profits to the stock market.  I'm not naive enough
> to believe this occurs only in America (witness the HIH and OneTel fiascos
> in Australia) but corporate America has taken it to all new highs.
>
> I expect shareholders to receive a return on their investment but there is
> such a thing as reasonable return.  Corporate America seems bent on
> extracting the last cent (nickel, dime, quarter, whatever) for the sole
> purpose of keeping a high share price.  The motivating factor is purely
> GREED -- and greed is NOT good.  Greed exposes gullibility.  Those two
> factors caused the dot-com fiasco and caused the railway speculation
> fiasco of a previous era.  Similar boom and bust cycles have occurred
> historically about every 50-80 years when sharp and unethical operators
> have presented get-rich-quick schemes to the greedy and gullible.  I have
> no doubt it will happen again.
>
> How can we correct this sad state of affairs?  By instilling ethics in
> management graduates.  By requiring corporations to have a sense of social
> justice.  By shareholders demanding better behaviour from the companies in
> which they invest.  By companies not employing greedy people as senior
> managers.  By holding directors and senior managers accountable.  By
> paying senior management commensurate with their abilities and results but
> not giving them exorbitant salaries and options.  Is a CEO worth twice
> what the guy on the shop floor gets?  Probably.  Is he worth 10 times?
> Maybe.  Is he worth twenty times?  I doubt it.
>
> Perhaps that requires too high a level of altruism?  OK, altruism is not
> really part of human nature.  Even people who are involved in supposedly
> altruistic endeavours are doing it for what they personally get out of it
> rather than any actual benefit to the supposed beneficiary.
>
> What we need is for customers to demand BETTER products instead of simply
> PRETTIER products.  Customers must realise they've been putting up with
> crap and stop.  They must start thinking for themselves instead of the
> current practice of 'managing by magazine' and doing whatever they read
> about in the popular press.  They must question the marketing spin.
>
> What we need is for IBM management to return to the previous practices of
> doing the right thing by the customer and selling them what is best for
> them instead of taking the easy path and selling the customer what the
> customer thinks they want.  That's not SELLING, that's simply taking money
> from a mug punter.
>
> Is this going to happen?  Not in my lifetime!  Read Anthony Trollope's
> "The Way We Live Now" which was written over a century ago and compare it
> to current behaviour.  Nothing has changed.
>
> Regards,
> Simon Coulter.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>    FlyByNight Software         AS/400 Technical Specialists
>    http://www.flybynight.com.au/
>
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