IBM is fighting to join the 21st century with outdated thinking and tools from 20+ years ago, before collaboration became a necessity in the workplace.
Examples:
- AT&T conferencing: no one knows who's joined a meeting bridge and there’s no way to share your screen or files.
- Notes: The former Lotus product (desktop or cloud version, called Verse) doesn’t properly integrate with modern mobile phones (encrypted emails can’t be opened, invites aren’t properly processed, web version doesn’t have feature-parity with desktop, etc.), but that’s not a big deal since 1/3 to 1/2 of the company doesn’t access email from their phone, so they may not realize this.
- IBM just started using Microsoft Office companywide in 2016; they had been using openoffice. Think about that.
- “Charts.” Strangely, PowerPoint is called charts instead of slides. This is strange quirk that reminds you the culture is stuck in the past, presumably from when people carried binders to meetings and wrote on easels.
- The agreement you sign as you leave the company asks you to be sure to return your floppy disks.
The culture is one of fear, intimidation, and micromanagement, and it starts from the top. When executives publicly humiliate their extended teams in front of their peers, it shuts down collaboration and ideas and kills morale. There is a constant threat made about resource actions (layoffs) which happen at random times and some people literally disappear without announcements or transitions. IBM announced they are reverting to a command and control model by centralizing on a few locations where the model will completely flip from remote teleworkers they have today to forced presence in the office. They are forcing people to relocate or resign. The offices are classic 1960s or 1980s furniture and decor depending on where you visit, though some are trying to remodel.
Overall, the company has great potential with a solid brand and some good ideas. Unfortunately, the culture is poisoning the company to where it may be unrecoverable.
