INDUSTRY - March 2000
by Dr. Arlie Hall

Sticking to the Basics
Ask the right questions and listen to the answers

OUR dependence on the flow of information via computers could seem to make all our non-technical ways of doing things old-fashioned and obsolete. But a look at the history of the computer business will prove that idea wrong. There’s a more traditional kind of information flow that was crucial to the existence of computers as we know them. It’s called listening. And it’s still crucial.

Like AOL’s leader Steve Case, IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr. was not an engineer but a marketing man: Although willing to devote R&D money to the computer’s possibilities, he was always skeptical of its broad commercial possibilities. What kept him receptive was his belief in listening to his customers. According to Rowena Olegario in Creating Modern Capitalism, he "loved to preach but he was also a shrewd listener. A marketer at heart, he hammered on the theme of paying scrupulous attention to the customer."

His judgement wasn’t infallible. He passed up a chance to buy the patents to xerography, for example. But when his son Thomas Watson Jr. took over IBM, his father’s philosophy was solidly in place. He avoided his desk and took to wandering around the company asking questions and expecting real answers. "I asked what was right, and, more important, what was wrong.

That approach was a major factor in IBM’s daring gamble in the 1960s to commit to the System/360 computer. Not only was the decision risky but bringing the product to market was like swallowing an elephant, one IBM executive said. But Tom Watson Jr. had listened carefully to both his customers and his engineers. He felt confident that demand was there and the time was right. He went ahead with what turned out to be one of the most successful product launches since the Model T Ford.

These days there’s no question the technical side is important. But executive decisions are still made by people and good ones are made by people who know how to ask the right questions and how to listen to the answers.

Dr. Arlie Hall is an adjunct professor for the Center for Robotics and Manufacturing at the University of Kentucky’s College of Engineering

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