Before I can publish my thoughts on what I’ll be up to next, I feel I need to address what prompted me to make a change.
I resigned from IBM at the end of 2017. It was a long time coming. I was a member of the IBM global product management transformation team (even the team names at IBM are long and boring), and I had been unhappy with its direction for about a year. I discussed my unhappiness with the executive in charge, and rather than listening to my recommendation to change direction, she suggested I change jobs within IBM.
To IBM’s credit, I had ample time to look for a team that I thought was headed in the right direction. Sadly, I didn’t find one that made me want to stay.
Just before my departure, I wrote a resignation letter to our CEO, Ginni Rometty. I wasn’t expecting a response (though a tiny part of me hoped I would get one); I just wanted to get off my chest what I felt I needed to say.
Since a lot of people have asked my why I left IBM, I’m posting my letter here on Medium so they can read my explanation. And even though I didn’t receive a response from Ginni, I’d love to receive responses from IBMers and others.
January 1, 2018
Dear Ginni,
I write this letter to you on my last day at IBM. I write it with the utmost love and the deepest sadness. I love having been an IBMer because I got to work with some of the best people I have ever met. I am sad because even with so many great IBMers, we can’t seem to transform IBM.
I joined a little over four years ago because I thought I could be essential in helping IBM transform to once again make delightful cupcakes. I am not resigning to join another company, nor to retire. I am resigning because I no longer believe that IBM is heading in the direction of ever making a delightful cupcake again.
I had advised IBM leaders since 1996 as an IT analyst — first at META Group and then at Gartner. Over the years, I saw IBM falling deeper into the trap highlighted in Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma”: focusing on its biggest customers by building offerings suited only to the highest end of the market.
To use my favorite IBM Design metaphor (coined by the folks at Adaptive Path), IBM fell into the habit of creating wedding cakes for its most demanding and profitable customers. In the meantime, born-in-the-cloud companies were introducing delightful cupcakes (simple products just good enough for the emerging end of some market), and incrementally improving them until they dominated the sweet spot of a much broader market. And we all know how that story plays out: another great company follows its most profitable customers off a cliff, as wedding cakes are replaced by tiers of cupcakes. So I joined IBM with my eyes wide open to the immense challenges it faced.
What led me to even consider becoming an IBMer, despite its struggles, was IBM’s embrace of design thinking back around 2013. I knew that design thinking held the promise of true transformation because I had been extolling its virtues for several years as a VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. It gave me the hope that IBM was serious about transforming its offerings from being inflicted on business users to being infectiously embraced by them. Maybe it even signalled that IBM would return to its roots as a leading vendor for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), when it designed cupcakes as game-changing as the Selectric typewriter, the IBM PC, and yes, even the AS/400. (The AS/400 was so simple to use that my best friend in high school taught himself how to create applications while working summers at his father’s warehouse company!)
Whatever scepticism I felt about design thinking transforming IBM was swept away when I met Phil Gilbert and the fledgling IBM Design team and joined them as a fellow IBMer. The goal of focusing on truly delighting users instead of on yet more features and functions was incredibly inspiring. And I’m proud to say that IBM Design did have a substantial impact on IBM offerings. They generally look and feel much better than they did four years ago.
However, incremental improvement isn’t what I signed up for. I became an IBMer to change the world — at least the world of IBM and its customers. Incremental improvement isn’t what IBM needs at this critical juncture in its illustrious history — it needs true transformation, radical transformation. It isn’t just about the shift to cloud technology. It is about the shift to a different business model — one focused on cloud-native SMBs who’ve never bought from IBM. Sadly, I no longer believe that IBM will transform into such a cloud leader.
In the four years we’ve worked on delivering a transformative product, the closest we came was Bluemix. But despite its initial promise as a platform to rival Amazon Web Services (AWS), it’s quite clear that it has succumbed to the IBM business model: satisfying our largest customers, but not delighting buyers who’ve never bought from IBM before. Despite all the wonderful UI work poured into Bluemix, AWS is still a more delightful user experience. And Amazon is pulling further ahead with each new release of AWS services.
And it’s not just Bluemix that has come up short. I’ve gotten to know our portfolios pretty well, first as part of IBM Design and currently as part of the Global Offering Management Transformation team. Across the board, our offerings are still primarily focused on our highest-end customers, who have the most demanding criteria, and require the most complex features and functions.
When I look around at the number of cupcakes introduced by competitors in recent years (Slack, Zoom, Tableau, Splunk, Mailchimp, ServiceNow, Cloudflare, Google Apps), I think to myself each time: “IBM could have easily produced such an offering if we’d succeeded in our transformation.” In my four years as an IBMer, we have failed to deliver a cupcake that has wowed the market. We haven’t even come close. This leads me to the disappointing conclusion that we probably never will.
I could stay at IBM, collect a paycheck, and watch IBM follow the path of other large IT vendors like CA, Sun, HP, and Oracle, as they slowly fade into irrelevance. But even if I kept my badge and my paycheck, I would no longer be an IBMer. Because our ultimate purpose, as IBMers, is to be essential.
I wouldn’t be essential by just keeping the ball rolling. Creating some incremental improvement isn’t being essential, at least not for me. I became an IBMer to be essential in helping other IBMers learn how to make delightful cupcakes, not somewhat more edible wedding cakes.
Consider this resignation letter free advice from an seasoned IT analyst who IBM used to listen to for constructive criticism. Perhaps it’s not too late. If enough IBMers speak up and say our transformation is failing, that we are not successful enough in winning new SMB users who have barely heard of IBM, then maybe you and the other IBM senior executives will redouble your efforts to truly complete the transformation. Nothing would make me prouder than to see IBM wow the market with a truly delightful cupcake that becomes a broad market leader in the cloud.
Until then, my deepest thanks to you for your tremendous efforts to transform IBM, and to my fellow IBMers for all they have shared with me. I am proud to have been an IBMer. I will always be grateful for the amazing experience of being an IBMer during such a transformative time.
Most sincerely,
— Nick
