IBM, for long, had a very short motto – THINK – that it tried to apply to its daily practices. Coined by Thomas Watson, the motto served IBM well through its foundational years. With this single word in mind, IBM prided itself in being at the cutting edge of industrial innovation.
However, as with thought itself, IBM was often criticized for “thinking” but not “doing” enough. Most of this criticism was external, but some of it was internal, coming from well meaning employees, often frustrated with dysfunctional processes and systems. With new market trends and IBM’s emergence from a period of difficulty, it made sense to heed the criticism and devise a new value system to support the internal restructuring. With this in mind, a jam session was organized to discover the core “culture” of IBM and what it means to be an IBMer. The output of that session was three separate values:
§ Dedication to every Client’s success
§ Innovation that matters – for our company and for the world
§ Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships
Upon further analysis, it is clear that these values represent something more than the professional standards to be followed. What emerged from the jam session was, therefore, even more symbolic – a way of life, with each of the values having direct links to everyday life. All IBMers who are guided by these values also share a common bond – a world view that is based on these values.
Dedication to every Client’s success
Dedication to a client’s success demands passion, focus, determination and true empathy. An IBMer is expected to use all available means to ensure client success. “Dedication” is not an empty word which is measured in terms of overtime hours. Instead, it is usually the result of an empathetic understanding of the client’s requirements and issues. Such empathy also helps us to build trust, a fact discussed in detail later.
These values cannot be applied during the course of a workday unless the IBMer is willing to extend them to all facets of external life as well. It is, for example, highly unlikely that a person is dedicated to the client’s cause but oblivious to the needs of his or her family, friends and community. Our professional life is but an extension of our personal life and people who exhibit this dichotomy of character will be unable to keep the façade from crumbling, leading eventually to the client suffering the consequences. It would be easy for peers to spot such anomalous cases and take appropriate corrective action.
Another important word in the phrase is “every”. An IBMer cannot be selective about which client to help to succeed and which to ignore. The success of one client cannot be at the cost of another. In other words, client success becomes an egalitarian, organization-wide, all-inclusive goal.
Equality, then, has to be one of the bases for an IBMer’s outlook on other world matters as well. An IBMer cannot discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color or caste. This has helped foster a warm and cozy work environment within IBM where fellow employees are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the “content of their character and deeds”. This facet is reflected in every policy within IBM – from compensation to career opportunities. This non-discriminatory attitude also bodes well for the community to which the IBMer belongs. It serves as one of the pillars of a secular democracy like India. An IBMer, insulated from discrimination of any kind at the workplace, is unlikely to be biased in personal life either.
On the basis of this value, an IBMer can be expected to become an important contributor to not only client’s success, but also the success of family, friends, colleagues and the community at large.
Innovation that matters – for our company and for the world
Innovation has become a buzzword in the recent times. However, innovation for the sake of innovation is pointless. Any innovation has to have a goal, which is usually the betterment of prevailing circumstances.
IBM’s value system tells us that any innovation should also take into consideration its wider implications. It has to have an inclusive basis, which improves the status of all the parties involved – the individual, the client, the organization, and the global community. The invention of the nuclear bomb, for example, even though it was an innovation of great technical achievement, cannot fit into IBM’s value system due to its adverse implications for humanity.
Further, innovations do not occur overnight. Any innovative IBMer will concede that innovations begin in small steps. It might, for example, start with a small code snippet to do everyday tasks. Over a period of time, the code snippet results in a reusable asset, then a product, and then an industry standard. An IBMer has to be open-minded and recognize opportunities for innovation in all walks of life – from smoother traffic control to decoding the human genome.
This is one aspect that IBM has always excelled in, as reflected in the large number of patents that are filed by IBMers everyday. However, to rest on our laurels would be foolish. New technologies are evolving everyday and IBMers are at the forefront of these innovations. An ideal example of this would be Service Oriented Architecture. As it gained prominence in the past decade, IBM has striven to master and develop the concept in order to be able to offer cutting edge solutions to its clients.
Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships
The recent scams in the corporate world such as Enron, Worldcom etc have raised serious doubts about the ethics followed by today’s professionals. This has necessitated IBM’s value system to integrate a strict set of ethics and moral standards.
It is reflected in the trust and personal responsibility that is expected from every IBMer in all their activities. An IBMer strives to build a relationship with the client and with fellow workers that is based on mutual trust. Trust can only be established over a period of time by the IBMer’s deeds and actions. Further, an IBMer focuses on maintaining that trust once it has been established. This trust, once established, can be easily extended to one’s deeds and actions towards the community, resulting in a conditioning of the conscience over a period of time – in other words, gaining trust becomes a habit.
Personal responsibility is one of the key components of building and maintaining trust. Shirking responsibility can never truly accomplish something substantial. Instead, an IBMer focuses on going beyond what is expected to ensure that a personal touch is retained in all interactions. Each undertaking should be treated with respect, as if it’s “personal”. Such an attitude would also help the IBMer to become involved in the surrounding community and work towards its betterment. IBM actively encourages this involvement by creating opportunities which allow IBMers to support school children, contribute to charities, assist in times of emergencies etc.
It is clear from the illustrations above that the value system inculcated in IBM holds relevance for not just this organization but also for other organizations and the community. In these troubled and ever-changing times, it serves to guide us and redirect our moral compass in times of doubt and uncertainty.
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