One of the stories about the culture of IBM involves a situation involving the company's founder Thomas Watson. One of his top senior managers made a very costly mistake costing IBM about $3 million. The manger started to clean out his desk and be ready for the inevitable "pink slip" firing. When Watson came to his office to talk, the manager started, "I know why you're here. I'll offer my resignation and leave." Watson looked at the manger and warmly replied" "You don't think I would let you go after I just spent $3 million to train you." Watson valued the manager, and he knew the individual wanted to do well but had failed.
Was Watson right?
What was Watson doing by not firing the manager?
What was Watson valuing?
Organizational Behavior and Management, (SIE), 7/e
John M. Ivancevich, University of Houston
Robert Konopaske, University of North Carolina-Wilmington
Michael T. Matteson, Houston
ISBN: 0070620113
Copyright year: 2005
2 comments:
I have never studied leadership but I will answer the questions the best I can.
Was Watson right? Yes, A few years ago I was watching this show on the travel channel on fast food restaurants. They were saying the the colonel of KFC failed a few times and was broke just before he started KFC.Watson may have seen something in the manager that reminded him of himself. Success means failing sometimes. It makes us wiser so that we will not make the same mistake.
What was Watson doing by not firing the manager? He was showing him that he believed in the manager's abilities and he also had compassion for him.
What was Watson valuing? Maybe the fact that the manager was grievous about the $3mil and didn't try to blame other people, like the people who work under him. He toke responsibility.
This story seems similar to Yahoshua and Peter you just wrote about. I mean Peter messing up and Yahoshua forgiving him.
Shon
One of Watson quotes was that in order to succeed "you must double your rate of failure" Therefore, I believe he was valuing the lesson in failure as a more valuable commodity. So the 3million was an investment in a lesson learned and strength obtained. Whether he was right or wrong is arbitrary, but he exhibited confidence in and valued failure as much as he does success.
Post a Comment