Conference 7.286::digital

    That's $532,231.00 cash saved next year.
    (p. 6 Digital Equipment Corporation Notice of 1989 Annual Meeting)
    

    re:  .-1
    
    Sort of crude, but to the point!  Actually, the savings would be
    quite a bit more when you factor in company-paid "hidden" costs.
    
    But anyway, what I really wanted to do here was commend the Livewire
    people, the poster of the base note, and everyone else in the Company
    who helped disseminate this information in a timely manner.  FOR ONCE,
    I didn't read about it in the newspaper first!  I didn't get caught
    in a trap when someone walked up to me and said "Oh, I heard a news
    bulletin on the NBR that Jack Shields resigned", where I might have
    derided them for spouting old news, and incorrect news at that ...
    
    Maybe things *are* changing for the better!
    
    Geoff

        Personally I would be a bit worried by the loss of yet another
        long term high flyer in Digital. 28 year veterans of the ilk of
        Jack, would earn their salaries etc probably more so than you or
        I. With the loss of Gordon Bell, Dave Cutler, Jack Shields, etc
        the aren't really any significant leading lights showing up within
        the corporation to help guide us into the next century.
        
        q
        

re: .3
Ironically, this is one of those occasions when external dissemination was 
more important than internal dissemination.  A senior vice president's
departure is a "material matter," subject to SEC (and other) rules
about public notification.  Still, we did get the word about as fast
as the public media did.

    I think it's a shame, and a loss to Digital.
    
    The news stated that Wall Street was not pleased with the announcement,
    and DEC stock dropped over 2 points.
    

    A member of the board was conspicuously absent when the last board
    meeting was held.  Was it the same member who has now resigned?

    Curious,
    - Vikas

    
    	re .3
    
    	I believe you have forgotten about Jack Smith. He's been with DEC
    	years more than Jack Shields was. 
    
    	/prc

>    A member of the board was conspicuously absent when the last board
>    meeting was held.  Was it the same member who has now resigned?

Note 825 ?

    re: .8
    
    DEC was founded in 1957. Shields joined the company in 1960 or 61.
    How many more "years" has Jack Smith been with us?
    
    Al
    

    re .7
    
    Vikas:
    
    Jack Shields was not a member of the Board of Directors (Ken Olsen
    is the only "official" Digital employee who is).  He was, however,
    a member of the Executive Committee.  I believe Jack was absent
    from the most recent "State of the Company" presentation.
    
    Chris Lane
    
    

>         <<< Note 943.10 by POCUS::KOZAKIEWICZ "Shoes for industry" >>>
     
>    DEC was founded in 1957. Shields joined the company in 1960 or 61.
>    How many more "years" has Jack Smith been with us?

Enough years for the DEC population to expand by 183/12 = 15 times!

Craig

The information below was obtained from ELF V1 this morning....

Name:  JOHN F SMITH
Nickname:  JACK         Badge_#:             12
Loc/MS: MLO10-2/A54         Phone:    223-2231

Name:  JOHN J SHIELDS
Nickname:  JACK         Badge_#:            183
Loc/MS: OGO1-2/R12          Phone:    276-9890

        Hmm..  I suppose I'm violating the "no posting mail without
        the original headers and the permission of the author" policy,
        but since VNS is also published in a VTX infobase, I suspect
        that it's OK for me to post this copy I received by MAIL with
        the irrelevant parts removed..
        
        Tom
        
<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 1915             Thursday  5-Oct-1989            Circulation :  7430 

VNS COMPUTER NEWS:                            [Tracy Talcott, VNS Computer Desk]
==================                            [Nashua, NH, USA                 ]

 Digital - John Shields, senior officer at Digital, quits
	{The Wall Street Journal, 4-Oct-89, p. A4}
   Digital Equipment Corp. said that John J. Shields, a senior VP who had often
 been considered a potential future chief executive, resigned.
   Mr. Shields, 51 years old, had run half the company, supervising sales,
 services, marketing and international operations for almost a decade. In
 fiscal 1989 ended June 30, his $532,231 salary was second only to that of
 63-year-old Kenneth H. Olsen, president and founder of the 32-year old
 computer company.
   The resignation, which had been rumored and denied since May, raises anew
 questions about who will succeed Mr. Olsen when he steps aside as the head of
 the nation's second biggest computer maker. Glenn Rifkin, co-author of "The
 Ultimate Entrepreneur," a biography of Mr. Olsen, and an editor of
 ComputerWorld, said: "I think Olsen has no intention of stepping down. If he
 has somebody in mind, it will be a big surprise."
   In New York Stock Exchange trading, stock of Digital, based in Maynard,
 Mass., fell $2.25 to $88.75.
   Neither Mr. Shields nor Mr. Olsen could be reached for comment. A Digital
 spokesman said the resignation was voluntary. In a prepared statement, the
 company said Mr. Shields had made "a personal decision to leave the company
 to pursue other interests."
   Mr. Olsen has always avoided anointing any successor, noting that he is
 healthy and plans to continue running the company for the foreseeable future.
 But analysts and consultants have long pressed him to announce a plan, fearing
 chaos will result if a strong successor isn't groomed.
   Some Digital watchers think Mr. Shields' departure leaves an open field for
 John F. Smith, a 54-year old senior VP who is in charge of engineering and
 manufacturing. A dark horse would be the company's other senior VP, Winston
 B. Hindle, who heads administrative functions and was once known internally as
 "Olsen's Richelieu" after the historic French cardinal and statesman who was
 chief minister of Louis XIII. But Mr. Hindle's age, 59, would make him more of
 a caretaker.
   John Logan, an analyst with Aberdeen Group in Boston, said, "Olsen believes
 he's good for at least another 10 years of running the company. When Olsen
 goes for succession planning he'll skip a generation [of managers] and go down
 20 years from his age." Mr. Olsen said the ultimate successor may be a VP now
 in his early 40s or someone who hasn't emerged yet.
   A successor to Mr. Shields wasn't named.
   The resignation emphasizes the seriousness of Digital's sales problems. Last
 year Digital's net income fell 18% to $1.07 billion, or $8.45 a share, and
 sales growth slowed for the second straight year, rising 11% to $12.74
 billion.
   Analysts said that Mr. Shields was blamed for last year's optimistic
 forecast of 18% growth. One Digital insider said he also was blamed for an
 unpopular increase in warranty costs that most customers viewed as a back-door
 price increase.
   Worse, after several years of improving customer relations, customer
 satisfaction declined last year. Steven Wendler, a consultant with Gartner
 Group - a market researcher - and a former Digital employee, said that last
 winter half the 500 customers at a Gartner Group program on Digital said they
 were dissatisfied with Digital's sales and service. "Mr. Olsen stood up and
 said, 'I'm going to fix that problem,'" he said.
   Digital insiders said Mr. Olsen has been paying increasing attention to the
 sales force this year. Digital spent millions of dollars renting facilities at
 Brown University, Providence, R.I., for the summer and bringing in sales
 people to make sure they understood their products.
   Analysts and former employees contend that Mr. Shields has been out of favor
 with Mr. Olsen since last fall. "He was on the skids, and he finally just
 resigned," said Jay P. Stevens, a Dean Witter analyst.
   Last spring, rumors that he was leaving flooded the company because Mr.
 Shields' name was left off organization charts and he didn't appear at some
 executive meetings. Electronic bulletin boards at Digital carried jokes:
 "Q. What's the difference between Elvis and Jack Shields? A. Elvis has been
 spotted recently."
   It has been a characteristic of Mr. Olsen in the past to leave unwanted
 executives in untenable positions and wait for them to quit. Terry Shannon,
 who follows Digital for market researcher International Data Corp.,
 Framingham, Mass., said that Mr. Shields lost some of his authority and was
 "left to contemplate the handwriting on the wall."
   However, the company repeatedly denied that Mr. Shields was about to leave.
 Last June Mr. Shields arranged for the company's public relations director to
 bring a reporter to his office for an interview in which he promised he didn't
 plan to leave. Yesterday through a spokesman, Mr. Shields emphasized that he
 had made the decision to leave only six weeks ago.

<><><><><><><><>   VNS Edition : 1915    Thursday  5-Oct-1989   <><><><><><><><>

        From today's LiveWire..
        
+-------------+TM                                                      ---___---
|d|i|g|i|t|a|l|                    Worldwide News                      LIVE WIRE
+-------------+                                                        ___---___

                 A note from Ken about Jack Shields' resignation

From:  Ken Olsen
To:    All Employees

    It is with regret that I accepted the resignation of Jack Shields, 
    senior vice president.

    Jack joined Digital in 1961 as a field service engineer.  During 
    the course of his 29 years with the company, he has made outstanding 
    contributions to Digital's growth around the world.  One of his most 
    important contributions was to build the field service organization 
    and business into one of the most respected and successful in the 
    industry.  For the past several years, Jack has managed our sales, 
    services and international operations.

    During his tenure at Digital, Jack has built an organization whose 
    strength will be needed to meet the business challenges of the 
    1990s.  His enthusiasm, business acumen, vision and management 
    have played a major role in our success.

    Jack's decision to leave Digital is a personal one.

    Please join me in wishing Jack and his family continued health 
    and success in the future.

re .0,.1,.6, etc:

I note that Jack Shields has been responsible for Sales and Marketing for many
years, whereas Jack Smith has been responsible for Engineering and Manufacturing.

Topic 939 is only the most recent of many dozens which analyze the serious
problems and deficiencies in Digital's Sales and Marketing operations. Although
there are also those who have expressed criticisms of the way Engineering and
Manufacturing work, I believe it is fair to say that the strong consensus of
this conference is that if S&M performed as well as E&M, we wouldn't have any
serious problems.

This personal judgment leaves aside all question of how much more difficult it
is to market and sell than to design and create products. That's not really
the issue. If you accept a job running one of these operations for a company
as big as Digital, you have to live or die with the results you get.

When reading topic 939 (especially the very compelling reply 24) I could not
help thinking of this topic, and hoping that a change at the very top might
presage a fundamental change in attitude which might clear the way for
innovations such as:

	- Advertising our existence, our expertise and our products;
	- Systematically promoting our success stories;
	- Efficiently automating our sales and marketing operations;
	- Simplifying and automating our pricing;
	- Making our sales people twice as effective by removing the
	  internal obstacles they have to struggle against every day;
	- Paying commissions as and when appropriate;
	- Authorising the field to accept reasonable risks in pursuit
	  of substantial business;
	- Encouraging a view beyond the current quarter;
	- Promising (and keeping) specific delivery dates;
	- Returning all calls from customers and prospects promptly and
	  to their satisfaction;
	- Training sales people to be knowledgeable in Digital's products
	  and those of third parties and the competition;
	- Providing salaries and working conditions which allow us to hire
	  and keep the best sales, sales support and customer support
	  people;
	- Rewarding managers for "growing" employees;
	- Measuring employees and managers on their entire track record
	  to date, not just the current quarter or year;
	- Measuring managers at ALL levels on REAL customer AND employee
	  satisfaction.

Lastly, while most of us certainly appreciate Jack Shields' contribution and
regret his decision to leave the company, it must be admitted that if a
branch salesman can be encouraged to seek other employment when he fails to
meet his budget for a couple of quarters, the same responsibility should
definitely be seen to operate at the highest level.

/Tom

RE: .-1

>Lastly, while most of us certainly appreciate Jack Shields' contribution and
>regret his decision to leave the company, it must be admitted that if a
>branch salesman can be encouraged to seek other employment when he fails to
>meet his budget for a couple of quarters, the same responsibility should
>definitely be seen to operate at the highest level.

He who lives by the numbers dies by the numbers.

John

 Computervision - Board of directors fires John J. Shields, CEO since 1990
	{The Boston Globe, 5-Apr-93, p. 21}
   The board said it was unhappy with the company's financial performance.  The
 board replaced Shields with Russell E. Planitzer, the Bedford, Mass.,
 company's chairman and leader of the buyout group that has struggled since
 acquiring the company in 1989.  "Jack's a very nice guy," Lawrence Landry, a
 Computervision director, said of Shields.  "There are no good guys and bad
 guys in this.  It's just that the board didn't have confidence in the
 operational leader at the top."  Conversations with Computervision director
 revealed that while Shields was adept at operations, he fell short of their
 demands for communicating with customers, investment bankers, shareholders and
 directors.  They said they were unhappy with the company's loss of market
 share in the past nine months. There were also some differences between
 Planitzer and Shields over their roles in the company.  Asked to be specific,
 Landry and other directors said Shields did not put Computervision close to
 its customers.  Instead, Planitzer made those visits both in the U.S. and
 Europe.  Shields disagreed.  "I met with a lot of customers," he said.
 Landry, who acknowledged "a certain amount of awkwardness" between Shields and
 Planitzer over their responsibilities, said the company's new focus on
 tailoring software to an array of customers was not carried out effectively.
 "Jack just didn't elect to spend a lot of time doing that," he said.  Shields,
 who earned about $650,000 in salary last year, insists the company is well
 positioned for the future, adding it has new marketing and distribution
 strategy for its redesigned CADDS4 product line.  Another director, who
 declined to speak on the record, insisted that the management change was
 amicable.  Still, he acknowledged that there were "ego problems between
 Planitzer and Shields."  Planitzer said that was not the case.  Directors said
 Shearson Lehman Brothers, which owns 23% of Computervision's stock, was not
 involved in Shields' termination.  "The board asked me to take this job,"
 Planitzer said.