better Kodak reorganization

In article ,
says...

On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?

On 05/09/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?




I am not saying that. I am saying that mismanagement was the major
factor in the decline of AT&T. The latter-day management had no vision
of what the company could be. They played catch-up with the competition,
so were always behind in product offerings. They bought stuff from China
and wondered why Western Electric (later spun into Lucent) had trouble
selling stuff. Their hardware and software in central office equipment
was sloppy and unmanageable, so operating companies started buying stuff
like that from Siemans and Ericcson instead. When they were finally
allowed to make computers for other purposes than just driving
electronic central offices, they mismanaged that so badly that they
decided to stop that and to buy an existing computer company instead.
They chose National Cash Register, not because they made great
computers, but because they were cheap. After a few years of mismanaging
NCR, they spun it off at half the price they paid for it because they
had messed it up so bad. The Sadim touch (opposite of Midas), where
everything they touched turned to $hit.

I am saying (now; I did not say this in my post) that losing that
lawsuit was a really great opportunity for the AT&T, and they wasted
that opportunity completely.

Getting rid of the 7 operating companies meant getting rid of the high
cost, labor intensive, regulated, low-profit local telephone service
part of the business, and keeping Bell Labs, Western Electric, Long
Lines, the defense business, and so on. These were all capital
intensive, low labor cost, high profit parts of the business. They would
also get rid of a lot of the overhead and excess management of running
the operating companies, so the remaining management could take care of
running the remaining business.

And the Operating Companies also messed up their opportunity. Bell Labs
was split into two parts, one retained by AT&T, and one jointly owned by
the 7 operating companies (BellCore). BellCore could have cut the
thickness of one 6 or 7 inch thick book of rules and regulations to
about 2 inches (The G.E.I.), but they did not. They had all the same bad
management as the AT&T part had. And since the operating companies did
not manufacture anything, they had trouble supporting BellCore
financially since they could not justify it to all the Public Utility
Commissions. So they didn't support it. I do not know if BellCore even
exists anymore. There are descendants of descendants of BellCore but
just as the present AT&T has little in common with the old one, the
present descendant has little to do with communication research.

On 5/8/2013 10:45 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.


A prime example of the inherent flaw of the B school game, taught in
every B school.

--
PeterN

On 5/9/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?


See my prior post. It was not. The problem is when you put money into
research and development, it adversely impacts the bottom line, for
accounting purposes. Lower bottom line = lower bonuses for management.


--
PeterN

In article ,
says...

On 05/09/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?




I am not saying that. I am saying that mismanagement was the major
factor in the decline of AT&T.

Well then you are saying that that the lawsuit was not the major factor
so why did you say that you were not saying that?

The latter-day management had no vision
of what the company could be.

They had no choice. The Justice Department decided what it could be.

They played catch-up with the competition,
so were always behind in product offerings.

They had no competition until the lawsuit.

They bought stuff from China
and wondered why Western Electric (later spun into Lucent) had trouble
selling stuff.

"Selling stuff" was a small part of their business.

Their hardware and software in central office equipment
was sloppy and unmanageable, so operating companies started buying stuff
like that from Siemans and Ericcson instead.

There were no "Operating Companies" until after the lawsuit.

When they were finally
allowed to make computers for other purposes than just driving
electronic central offices, they mismanaged that so badly that they
decided to stop that and to buy an existing computer company instead.

They wouldn't have had to make computers for any other purpose without
the lawsuit.

They chose National Cash Register, not because they made great
computers, but because they were cheap. After a few years of mismanaging
NCR, they spun it off at half the price they paid for it because they
had messed it up so bad. The Sadim touch (opposite of Midas), where
everything they touched turned to $hit.

I am saying (now; I did not say this in my post) that losing that
lawsuit was a really great opportunity for the AT&T, and they wasted
that opportunity completely.

Only if you want them to be something other than what they were, the
telephone company.

Getting rid of the 7 operating companies meant getting rid of the high
cost, labor intensive, regulated, low-profit local telephone service
part of the business, and keeping Bell Labs, Western Electric, Long
Lines, the defense business, and so on. These were all capital
intensive, low labor cost, high profit parts of the business. They would
also get rid of a lot of the overhead and excess management of running
the operating companies, so the remaining management could take care of
running the remaining business.

Except that they were not allowed to keep Western Electric or Bell Labs.
And they lost their monopoly on long-distance as well which meant that
their resources were far less than they had been.

And the Operating Companies also messed up their opportunity. Bell Labs
was split into two parts, one retained by AT&T, and one jointly owned by
the 7 operating companies (BellCore).

How was this an "opportunity"?

BellCore could have cut the
thickness of one 6 or 7 inch thick book of rules and regulations to
about 2 inches (The G.E.I.), but they did not. They had all the same bad
management as the AT&T part had. And since the operating companies did
not manufacture anything, they had trouble supporting BellCore
financially since they could not justify it to all the Public Utility
Commissions. So they didn't support it. I do not know if BellCore even
exists anymore. There are descendants of descendants of BellCore but
just as the present AT&T has little in common with the old one, the
present descendant has little to do with communication research.

And all due to the lawsuit.

Every single "problem" you list is the result of the actions of MCI's
lawyers.

On 05/09/2013 01:02 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 05/09/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?




I am not saying that. I am saying that mismanagement was the major
factor in the decline of AT&T.

Well then you are saying that that the lawsuit was not the major factor
so why did you say that you were not saying that?

I said that the lawsuit was not a major factor in the breakup. The
company was mismanaged seriously starting around 1970 any you cannot
blame that on a lawsuit later. AT&T did not learn the lesson of the
Carterphone decision years before and it was downhill ever since.

The latter-day management had no vision
of what the company could be.

They had no choice. The Justice Department decided what it could be.

That breakup was negotiated between AT&T and the Justice Department. It
made things simpler for both sides. AT&T did not think they could get
away with unloading the operating companies and keep the high profit
stuff. The Justice Department did not really understand that and just
accepted things.

They played catch-up with the competition,
so were always behind in product offerings.

They had no competition until the lawsuit.

Sure there was. What became SPRINT was around. It was a private network
for the Southern Pacific Railroad, in direct competition with Long Lines.

They bought stuff from China
and wondered why Western Electric (later spun into Lucent) had trouble
selling stuff.

"Selling stuff" was a small part of their business.

Selling stuff was the Entire business of Western Electric. They sold all
the equipment the operating companies used except maybe toilet paper and
Scotch Tape. Central Offices, PBXs, telephones, wire, ...

Their hardware and software in central office equipment
was sloppy and unmanageable, so operating companies started buying stuff
like that from Siemans and Ericcson instead.

There were no "Operating Companies" until after the lawsuit.

If I remember correctly, there were 22 operating companies before. E.g.,
New England Bell, New York Telephone, New Jersey Bell, Chesapeake and
Potomac, Southern Bell, South Central Bell, South Western Bell,

When they were finally
allowed to make computers for other purposes than just driving
electronic central offices, they mismanaged that so badly that they
decided to stop that and to buy an existing computer company instead.

They wouldn't have had to make computers for any other purpose without
the lawsuit.

Sure they would. They used lots of computers internally, and they wanted
to sell them. They were early pioneers in making computers even before
WW-II. They made of the first transistorized computers. About that time,
in an earlier case, the Justice Department made them stop making
computers, and the teams working on them were broken up, partly by mass
resignations of people who went to work for independent computer
manufacturers.

They chose National Cash Register, not because they made great
computers, but because they were cheap. After a few years of mismanaging
NCR, they spun it off at half the price they paid for it because they
had messed it up so bad. The Sadim touch (opposite of Midas), where
everything they touched turned to $hit.

I am saying (now; I did not say this in my post) that losing that
lawsuit was a really great opportunity for the AT&T, and they wasted
that opportunity completely.

Only if you want them to be something other than what they were, the
telephone company.

They were much much more than a telephone company. They engaged in much
fundamental research only tangentially related to telephones. For
example, Davisson and Germer's discovery that electrons were both waves
and particles (Nobel prize in physics), Ives' discovery of retardation
of atomic clocks, invention of transistor instead of just making better
telephone relays, ...

RCA had a similar problem at Sarnoff Research Center. The bean counters
did not realize how important research was (as contrasted to short-term
product development) and wanted to close it down to improve short term
profits. Now RCA is no more. They had to get out of the computer
business even though they knew it was their future. They realized that a
large proportion of their products were the results of work done in the
previous 10 years at Sarnoff, but the bean counters won.

Getting rid of the 7 operating companies meant getting rid of the high
cost, labor intensive, regulated, low-profit local telephone service
part of the business, and keeping Bell Labs, Western Electric, Long
Lines, the defense business, and so on. These were all capital
intensive, low labor cost, high profit parts of the business. They would
also get rid of a lot of the overhead and excess management of running
the operating companies, so the remaining management could take care of
running the remaining business.

Except that they were not allowed to keep Western Electric or Bell Labs.

AT&T was allowed to keep Western Electric and Bell Labs. And they did
keep both until years later when they spun off Verizon, and Verizon got
them. That did not work out well and Alcatel bought Verizon, and now
Alcatel is not doing well.

And they lost their monopoly on long-distance as well which meant that
their resources were far less than they had been.

And the Operating Companies also messed up their opportunity. Bell Labs
was split into two parts, one retained by AT&T, and one jointly owned by
the 7 operating companies (BellCore).

How was this an "opportunity"?

BellCore could have dumped the unwhieldy G.E.I, streamlined management,
and managed the company. They could have become the leaders they once
were back when AT&T was well managed by people like Vail. But instead
they got Charlie Brown and Robert Allen.

BellCore could have cut the
thickness of one 6 or 7 inch thick book of rules and regulations to
about 2 inches (The G.E.I.), but they did not. They had all the same bad
management as the AT&T part had. And since the operating companies did
not manufacture anything, they had trouble supporting BellCore
financially since they could not justify it to all the Public Utility
Commissions. So they didn't support it. I do not know if BellCore even
exists anymore. There are descendants of descendants of BellCore but
just as the present AT&T has little in common with the old one, the
present descendant has little to do with communication research.

And all due to the lawsuit.

Every single "problem" you list is the result of the actions of MCI's
lawyers.





Nonsense. They played a part, but AT&T would have fallen apart
regardless. It might have taken a little longer.

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
On 05/09/2013 01:02 PM, J. Clarke wrote:

Every single "problem" you list is the result of the actions of MCI's
lawyers.


Nonsense. They played a part, but AT&T would have fallen apart
regardless. It might have taken a little longer.

Interesting discussion. Jean-David is close to being
right about what happened, but still not quite correct
about what is significant along the path. The MCI suit
was but a small symptom of a very big problem, not the
cause of anything.

The Bell System was plagued by the very common
affliction of a corporate culture so different and so
embedded that it was impossible to change it to meet the
needs of a changing world. What worked in 1940 could not
possibly function well in 1960.

All of the upper level executive management in the
parent company came up through the ranks of a regulated
monopoly. That structure functioned extremely well,
along with a very basic form of Universal Service, for
literally decades. It was totally invalid in 1960.

Two things had changed. One was the invention of the
transistor and the other was Shannon's paper on the
theory of communications. Shannon showed us what to do,
and solid state electronics provide a way to accomplish
it. (Note that virtually all of the other theory,
absent the direction and a mechanism, had been developed
by the 1930's and then highly refined during WWII. That
includes PCM, TV, microwave radio, digital logic, etc
etc.)

Within the decade of the 1950's everything about the
corporate structure of the Bell System became wrong, but
there was no way to change it!

All of the executive management was necessarily chosen
from a promotion path based on success within the old
system. That particular system was diametrically
opposed to a quick moving operating economy model as
opposed to the slow moving operating and highly
efficient administrative model of the old system. Upper
level executive management simply could not break the
strangle hold that the second level had on everything
the company did. One reason they couldn't was simply
because they had become upper level management *because*
they were themselves good at manipulation of that model.

Right up to the day the Board of Directors decided to
simply sell off AT&T they had been trying to break the
strangle hold of that system of executive management,
and finally came to the conclusion that it was
impossible to do if the corporate structure were left
intact.

If you want a specific example, and a "cause"... it was
the change from a business model funded by "message
traffic" to a world where "data communications" was the
economic backbone of the company.

Lawyers had nothing to do with it!

The coming decline of message traffic revenue compared
to data comm revenue was well known within AT&T, yet
virtually ignored at all levels of management below the
Board of Directors. The predicted date when the charts
would showed the two were equal finally came to
be... and that is almost the exact same time that AT&T's
Board called it quits. Otherwise they would have been
bankrupt very soon.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

PeterN wrote:
On 5/8/2013 10:45 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote:
On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.

The Bell System was "done in" by the major shifts in the
economic model of the telecommunications business
brought about by new technologies.

Lawyers are merely the people who deal with the result
of such problems, not the cause.

(Incidentally, AT&T is renowned for their R&D scientists,
but it is also true that they had some of the best legal
minds available in corporate America.)

In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age.

An invalid premise. Going back that far doesn't even
match the "understood the business" speculation. They
were all wrangling to discover what did work at that
time. Some survived, most did not, because nobody
"understood" or knew what would work. For at least a
couple of decades it was random chaos (aka Capitalism).

By the 30's and 40's of course it settled into a
regulated monopoly that was primarily executed as a very
efficient system of administration, for both operations
and the government regulation inherent in their monopoly
status. And it is significant that the model under
which Bell System management functioned did not exist
elsewhere. It was necessarily a unique corporate
culture because of that. (The only "business school"
that taught how it worked was the Bell System school
of hard knocks... coming up through the ranks.)

By 1960 of course that meant even the most elder and
highest levels of the executive management were born and
raised within in that system, and rose to the top
*because* of their ability to execute that system.

They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

Not a tragedy, a fable. They understood the system, and
they were as good as it gets! The problem was that the
model which was appropriate in 1940, which is what they
understood, didn't exist in 1960.

A prime example of the inherent flaw of the B school
game, taught in every B school.

A prime example of cooking up a great sounding story to
explain what is not understood. Typical of religious
dogma...

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

PeterN wrote:
On 5/9/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?


See my prior post. It was not. The problem is when you
put money into research and development, it adversely
impacts the bottom line, for accounting purposes. Lower
bottom line = lower bonuses for management.

Neither of those descriptions relate to the history of AT&T.

Think "Information Age". In 1940 it was a company based
on the economics of message traffic. By 1960 there were
predictions on when revenue from message traffic would
drop below revenue from byte oriented data traffic.

Corporate AT&T was frozen and unable to respond to the
changes that occured as those predictions became true.

Literally within months of the day the data traffic
revenues rose above message traffic revenues the AT&T
Board of Directors threw in the towel, disolved the
company as it existed, sold off the parts, and went
home.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

In article ,
says...

On 5/9/2013 12:48 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 05/08/2013 04:49 PM, J. Clarke wrote:
In article 79bf218c-4aab-4dce-8f0c-
, says...

On May 7, 12:48 pm, Bowser wrote:
On Mon, 6 May 2013 19:13:46 +0200, Alfred Molon

wrote:
In article , Bowser says...
Keep one thing in mind: Kodak's past management wasn't very bright.
These are they guys who once tasked their people with finding a way to
kill the digital revolution to protect their film business.

... really they did? Almost too funny to be true. What plan did Kodak
devise to kill digital photography?

OK, not a CEO, but a product manager:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/es...k_eulogy.shtml

Still, what a moron...

There are numerous examples of large companies being wholly and
illogically resistant to change. Sony, GM, Bell, the list of
casualties and soon-to-be casualties goes on.

Bell was not done in by "change", it was done in by lawyers.


In my opinion as a former employee of a Bell System subsidiary, the
company was not done in by change, and lawyers may have helped do it in,
but were not the primary cause.

My perception is that the old timers from the time of Theodore Vail
onward, who understood the business, had all died or retired, or were
forced out by their age. They were replaced by business administration
types whose principle achievements in college was their abilities on the
football teams of second string leagues. They were all cheering, slogans
(Ready, Fire, Aim was a pet peeve of mine) and win the next quarter.
They did not understand the business, they had no vision beyond the next
quarterly report. They wanted to boost the value of their stock options
and they did not care what happened to the company afterwards. Après
moi, le déluge. And that is what they got. It was so sad to see this
over 100 year old institution destroyed by the rot from within. A tragedy.

So you're saying that the MCI lawsuit that resulted in the breakup of
AT&T into 7 different companies and forced the divestiture of Western
Electric and Bell Labs was not the major factor in the decline of AT&T?


See my prior post. It was not. The problem is when you put money into
research and development, it adversely impacts the bottom line, for
accounting purposes. Lower bottom line = lower bonuses for management.

While you can accuse AT&T of many things, giving research short shrift
is not one of them. Their research department produced Unix, the C
programming language, the laser, the transistor, the CCD, and 7 Nobel
Prizes, and all of that was in addition to the work that actually
affected the bottom line.