IBM: Respond to a Hungry Tiger with Deflection and Delay
April 24, 2020
I stumbled across an essay by a former IBM Watson professional writing in his new role at a real estate company. The career choice struck me as interesting, and I decided to read “How to Manage During A Crisis: Sort Everything Into “Now, Next, or Later“. The advice and opinion article appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine. I rarely associated IBM Watson, real estate, and entrepreneurial spirit. Time to learn I decided.
The write up states:
In normal times, every business should have a plan. But you can’t plan for contingencies when the business climate might change, when new laws and regulations are imminent, or, as in our current crisis, public health threats are in flux. At that point, planning is simply a waste of time. What to do instead? React fast.
Management with minimal thought strikes me as a fight or flight approach. The idea of figuring out how to avoid a hungry tiger is one thing, dealing with business challenges seem slightly different.
The desire to react fast may be why this individual abandoned the relative safety and security of IBM for the thrilling world of property management. As those renting properties close their offices, I imagine that property management is becoming slightly more thrilling than it was a few years ago.
This management advice strikes me as the type of thinking that does not match up with IBM. The essay notes:
The U.S. Air Force has a conceptual model for fighter pilots called OODA—or, “observe, orient, decide and act”—that might help you think about crisis management.
This is an updated version of the hungry tiger situation. Humans may be hard wired to get an adrenaline boost from OODA situations — if the enemy’s air to air missile is picked up by the aircraft’s defensive systems AND the systems react in the time available to neutralize the attack. Modern air warfare, if I understand the upside of the F 35 platform, is to never get into this surprise situation.
Are IBM’s problems a surprise like this tiger ruining a nice walk in the bush? Perhaps IBM embraces the hungry tiger as a way to buy time and create a plausible explanation for its revenue decrease and disappointing financial outlook?
What about IBM?
The author just mentions IBM Watson, so I think he is either proud of having worked on that outstanding collection of smart technology, he wants to bask in Watson’s halo effect, or he is making a distinction between the real estate way and the IBM way.
IBM has had its share of minor troubles: Litigation related to RIFFing workers, management turnover at the top, and financial disruptions.
“IBM Q1 2020 Earnings Call Highlights: Withdraws 2020 Outlook Amid Covid-19 Crisis” suggests that IBM is shifting into the adrenaline charged world of facing one or more hungry tigers.
The write up reports:
As the impact of COVID-19 intensified in March, [IBM] clients began to deprioritize some of their projects. In this environment, the company deployed its resources to engage customers virtually, modernize and migrate the applications to the cloud, empowering a remote workforce with cybersecurity and IT resiliency. The company expects its Global Business Services customers to continue to delay and replan some of their projects in the near term.
Okay, Covid was a surprise to almost everyone except the Chinese and BlueDot in Canada. Yes, the virus has created some economic pressure. But IBM’s issues began long before Covid became the alleged surprise.
IBM has bought back about $140 billion in its stock to put some shine on the Big Blue operation. The write up points out:
IBM withdrew its earlier profit outlook for the full-year 2020 given the uncertain environment in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. The company said that with better clarity on the economic recovery it will reassess the situation and will give an update at the end of the second quarter of 2020. When IBM announced fourth-quarter 2019 results in January, it had projected GAAP EPS to be at least $10.57 and non-GAAP EPS to be at least $13.35 for fiscal 2020. The company expects the second quarter to be more challenging if the customers continue their same buying pattern.
The translation in my lexicon means, “We are losing revenue and costs remain a problem. Circle the wagons. Blame the virus.”
DarkCyber believes that IBM’s entrepreneurial behavior will mean more staff cutbacks, more wild and crazy marketing, and acquisitions which deliver a RedHat type of boost. Yep, fast, decisive action.
What does the former IBM Watson professional advise:
But when an extreme or unprecedented event takes place, those plans almost always come up short—because they’re geared toward maintaining business as usual, instead of coping with the kind of massive disruption that nobody could prepare for… Right now it’s better to ditch those five-year plans… and get ready for curve balls we know we can’t predict.
Whoa, Nellie. I thought that IBM Watson made it possible to make sense of disparate information. Watson can process data and generate “answers.” What this former IBMer recommends and what IBM itslef is doing is rationalizing fear, uncertainty, and dread.
One would think that anyone injected with the Big Blue antiviral would do more than dodge reality. The problme is not a particular hungry tiger; the problem is the IBM systems and methods.
The IBM way has not worked well for years, and it is unlikely that the duck-and-delay approach will deliver what stakeholders expect: Growth, sustainable revenue, and a healthy bottom line.
Never fear, gentle IBM workers, there are opportunities in real estate or as management consultants.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2020
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