Conference 7.286::digital

    
    
    Taking .0 even further, did anyone else but me get the impression that
    besides being rather unusual in its presentation the DVN showed Ken
    to be uncomfortable.  He usually looks so relaxed!
    
    

    I was in a meeting that just let out, so I missed all three copies of
    this talk.  What did he say that we all need to know about???
    
    /Charlotte

    RE: .0 You must have seen the extended version.
    
    Mike

    No, it wasn't really extended...he said the state of the company
    message would be delayed, and then went into how great DECworld was,
    and that we had so many leads that we needed to get out and fullfill
    them.
    
    He finished it off with a simple message....."SELL"
    

    If anything, he seemed to be more disconnected and disorganized than
    usual.  This DVN wasn't even worth the air time for the satellite, not
    to mention the hundreds of lost manhours spent looking at it!  Having
    spent a couple of decades of being a cheerleader for Ken, I now feel
    that it's time for him to move up/aside and let someone REALLY
    reorganize the company.  There are still too many redundant/nebulous
    jobs being filled by politically well-connected people.  Witness the
    death of the Phoenix manufacturing plant.  The former plant manager,
    who by all accounts was mostly responsible for this, is still on the
    payroll, along with all of his former plant staff.  Go figure.  The
    spiral down continues......
    

    The Livewire article that announced this DVN said that he would talk
    about "two major changes that are having a visible, positive impact on
    the company."
    
    What were they?    

    
    I have seen a few memos/notes flying around that convince me that KO
    understands some of the problems with the company.  I'm still waiting
    to hear the messages that will help re-allign us and get us on track
    again.  What's the game plan?  We all need to feel good aobut being
    a part of this company.  Hey, even the Titanic had the band play as
    they sank into the sea.
    
    I was very dissapointed to see how many VP's SERP'ed out.
    
    ...and the stock drops under $40 per share.  8*{
    
    

	RE: KO's message, "SELL"

	What did he mean?   Sell your stock ?!?!

>>               <<< Note 1923.7 by DIODE::CROWELL "Jon Crowell" >>>

    
>>      I was very dissapointed to see how many VP's SERP'ed out.
  

Me, too.  Far too few.

Bob  

re Note 1923.6 by BTOVT::SOJDA_L:

>     The Livewire article that announced this DVN said that he would talk
>     about "two major changes that are having a visible, positive impact on
>     the company."
  
        Well, he mentioned the partitioning of engineering under
        three Marketing VPs -- but that was hardly news.

        Bob

    .0 *must* have seen an extended version.. by my watch, it was 5
    minutes.
    
    At the end, the audience joined in a rousing "What? That's it?!?"
    
    Sell!
    
    ...tom

    KO is visiting MKO this morning to tour the Desktop Direct group.  Then
    he is speaking to the Direct Marketing Organization (DMO) quarterly
    meeting this p.m.  Perhaps he will reference the video.  In any event,
    I'll post anything of interest.
    
    Chet

This is what I saw:

The DVN schedule of events.

The digital logo ala DVN

A blue Screen that said something to the effect of:
             A message to Employees about the postponment of the state
             of the company address

And suddenly, as if caught in midsentence, there was KO on the screen and
he started by saying:

   The reason that the state of the company address was postponed was that
because there was 4 weeks left in the quarter, and there were so many leads
from a unimaginably successful decworld, that the sales and marketing people
wanted to SELL and that's why he was forced to postpone.

   Then he said that lots of people came to DECWORLD and invited their
friends, and it surpassed expectations.  

    Then he described engineering being broken up under the three VP's 
(christ,mccabe, and palmer) and for what business they respectively would be
responsible.  He then said that the two changes, one of which took 
effect a couple of years ago and worked and a new one that is taking a
shorter time.  he did not specify what they really were.

    Then he said that DEC used to be a marketing company, but when our
products began to sell themselves we became an engineering company.  We paid
to much attention to the end of the quarter and that in the middle of the
quarter we suddenly would figure out that we needed revenue and the last month
of each quarter was a mad scramble to sell machines.  Then he said something
about this making things quarterly and what was missing was a sense of panic
and we need a sense of panic now.

     he then talked about a minute about which I cannot remember and then
he summarized by saying:

       So my message to the company is:  Go Sell

Digital Logo appears

Screen goes blank

Lights come on

everybody in the Gen Doriot picked their jaws off the ground and said 

                 That's It???

and we left.   It wasn't even 5 minutes.



I think I know what he was trying to say, but I'm just not sure it came
across in the best way.

    One other thing he mentioned is the fact that we seem to have lost
    our "panic" mentality.  The message was, years ago we'd have a 
    sense of panic and excitment near quarter's end because we hadn't
    reached the goals we had set for ourselves.  We'd then have to push 
    in a BIG way to make a decent profit.  Then came the '80s and we got 
    fat, dumb and happy.  We lost that sense of panic.  It's now time to 
    get it back...
    
    					Steve

    In the past Ken has been accused of speaking in parables, and it was up
    to us to figure out what he meant. Working from this, I would offer
    that, he has directly demanded that sales - and marketing (?) work
    their tails off this next 4 weeks, and generate some revenue.
    All other parts of the company should make themselves available to 
    support these groups in their task.
    
    I can see a month from now, it really hitting the fan, when numbers 
    do not meet expectations, after he explicitly told us to work our
    tails off.
    
    that is my 2 cents at least.
    
    mike

        One point that I considered important:  Ken said that going out
        to sell now was important because 1) we have lots of leads from
        DECworld, 3) we have equipment ready to sell, and 2) we aren't
        making our numbers this quarter.

        The first reason is good news, but the other two implied to me
        that we are manufacturing lots of equipment that nobody is buying.

        					B.J.

	Why should it take more than 5 minutes to say "Go Sell"?.
	Kudos to KO for making the message concise, and letting everyone
	get back to work.

					Tom_K

re .17


you are correct.  It would be silly to take more than 5 minutes to say
what was said.  Unfortunately a lot of people feel like the sword of 
Damocles is hanging above them, and they went looking for answers, not
a pep talk.  I think that the 2 paragraph DVN advertisement that went
around made it sound like there was to be some earth-shattering news
given.  


It's like anything else.  People in the 40's used to listen to FDR's
fireside chats to see what he had to say.  I'm sure expectations and
what they heard often did not jive.

    I didn't see the DVN broadcast - too busy to take the time, I guess.
    But, I find it interesting that such a brief, direct message can have so 
    many different interpretations...
    
    tim
    

well, it almost took as long to read the VTX blurb as it did to hear Ken
say what he said. It would have been more expeditious if the VTX article
had just had exactly what Ken said in it.
I'm not sure what it was that I was expecting Ken to say but, that wasn't it!

The difference now is, in the past the panic was to get the manufactured 
systems 'out the door' to the customers who had bought them, today, the
problem is that there are no customers that are buying. How do salesmen, er
rather 'salespersons' get customers to spend when the customers do not
want to?

- George

I think the brevity of the broadcast is distressing simply because people 
expect more from a DVN. After all, why go to all the trouble of
setting it up and getting people together for something so short and not
really earth-shattering. A well-written memo, brief, to the point, yet 
personable, could have conveyed the same message, without stirring up such 
confusion.

    Well...don't SELL your stock...
    
    I saw 39 7/8 on CNN this morning!  Ouch....
    

Is it possible that the reason for the DVN broadcast was we'd already bought
satellite time for the state of the company and didn't want to waste it?

I don't know if the "quarterly panic" war story that KO told us quite had the
intended effect on me.  The picture it conjured for me is similar to what I've
read about harvests in the late USSR.  Since they didn't have an adequate 
infrastructure in place to harvest all their crops, every year they'd have to
pull everyone off their jobs (engineers, pilots, managers, etc) to help with the
harvest.

That's what KO's war story stirred in my mind, and I'm still not sure it's a 
good idea to use an inadequate infrastructure picture as a good example.

    Sounds like I didn't miss anything important - the meeting I was in at
    the time was a lot more informative and useful.  Oh, well!
    
    /Charlotte

    
    re: .-back a few... 
    
    
    	regarding the proverbial "doo-doo" (sp?) hitting the fan , well
    all i can tell you is that it is happening even as we speak... and it
    will happen to one and all on or before july 2.

>>	regarding the proverbial "doo-doo" (sp?) hitting the fan , well
>>    all i can tell you is that it is happening even as we speak... and it
>>    will happen to one and all on or before july 2.
    
    Can you be more specific on what is happening as we speak and how you
    know about it?
    
    

    re.22 and the stock price - consider that, for every share sold,
    _somebody_ is buying. Methinks that _somebody is going to make lots
    of money in a few years. (And I'm darn glad that I picked up a
    bunch of shares on Monday ;-) )

    That "somebody" might be Digital itself supporting its own stock price.

    What forms your expectation that Digital will be profitable in the next
    12 months?

    I'm optimistic, but not about the stock price, or the factors that I
    believe will drive the stock price in the next 12 months.

    If we look beyond 12 months, then there are safer places to put your
    money while Digital determines a strategy which will restore it to
    profitability.

    
    re. -a couple...
    
    
    	i wish i could be more specific..  Mike Thurk (NaC VP) had a 
    meeting in the LKG cafeteria a week or so ago and talked about the
    upcoming downsizing etc... basically he said that we (DEC) are not
    doing as well as we'd like and that he'd like to get all his downsizing
    done ASAP so that we may go about the task of doing work without all
    the distraction... the numbers i heard were 10% and 20%... there will
    be some sort of severance package in place for this round.. not sure
    about the next round... someone mentioned state requirement minimum at
    the meeting ..  then a couple days later our group within NaC had a
    meeting essentially about the same thing ... In any event the gist of
    what I got out of it was that one would be prudent to have their resume
    updated such that it is presentable to prospective outside employers..
    there was some chatter about if one were to survive this pass, that the
    next pass the severance would be the state required minimum. Seems
    rather punitive to those that may end up surviving this particular cut.
    It seems that we are about embark on something that actually create
    that which we seek to avoid....losing our best folks..... sorry if all
    this doesn't make you smile.....oh the scope of these cuts will affect
    the entire company we were told......:0(
    

    Well, actually Mike Thurk explicitly would not mention numbers or a
    specific number for NAC.  During the site talk that Mike gave, I
    asked him if the layoffs were domestic (US) only and he replied "No".
    
    My group was also told what we could expect and it seems to be much
    happier news than most groups will get.

    Looks like they will have to postpone "The State of the Company"
    meeting again.  Makes it kind of afterthought since we announce the
    earnings next week...
    
    What did people think of the way Ken Olsen's retirement was announced?