The great captains of open-ocean voyaging have one thing in common. They saw leadership as a moral responsibility for common welfare. They fostered a value system that created shared wealth.
The great leaders of the open-ocean voyaging set standards by which today’s business and political leaders can be evaluated.
John Winthrop aboard the Arbella bound for the New World
What is true of the Polynesian voyagerswho settled the Hawaiian Islands and Black Bart, the most successful captain in the Golden Age of Piracy, is also true for the John Winthrop, captain of the Arbella and the first governor of the colony that became our country.
All had the very lives of their shipmates in their hands
All led from the values of inclusion
All created thriving relationships that led to rewards for all
Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of the colony’s first 20 years of existence. His writings and vision of the colony dominated New England colonial development, influencing the government and religion of neighboring colonies.
During his voyage aboard the Arbella in the summer of 1630, Winthrop wrote his famous sermon, A Model of Christian Charity. He ends the sermon with practical tactics for the shared endeavor to be a success, not a shipwreck:
“We must be knit together, in this work, as one man.
We must entertain each other in brotherly affection.
We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities.
We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality.
We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.
So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
…
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Winthrop’s intent was to sustain the people on a long and dangerous voyage, and to prepare them for planting a new society in a perilous environment, but his practical wisdom is timeless. “Unity of the spirit in the bond of peace”took the country quite a long way.
The phrase, “city upon a hill,” is used to this day to symbolize certain essential characteristics of what Americans expect in their leaders.
John Winthrop rallied people around a common weal. This notion has applicability today in government and in business.
In the political realm, for example, the current budget debate is rife with choices like this one: cutting $8.5 billion for low-income housing or cutting $8.5 billion in mortgage tax deductions for second vacation homes. According to Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, interviewed on NPR,most people don’t realize the consequences of such a choice. In today’s world, of extreme income inequality, 1% percent of the US population takes home 25% of the income and owns 40% of wealth in this country.
According to President Obama, the debate about our national budget is about “more than just numbers on a page…..It’s about the kind of country we believe in.” In the 50th state, where Obama grew up, values-based leadership is the societal norm and is understood to be multi-faceted. On the mainland, a high-level debate about values can be quickly devolve to one polarizing issue. Thinking about values, plural, is difficult but necessary. To forget what sustains our interdependence as citizens is to forget who we are as Americans.
In the business realm, companies forget the common weal to their financial peril. IBM proved this in 1992, with the largest loss in US business history. History appears poised to repeat itself. Computer technology behemoth Oracle Corporation has recently made a decision to prop up its hardware business by discontinuing development for its software products that run on Itanium systems from rival vendor HP. This was a decision made for short-term gain to Oracle without apparent thought to the consequences for the thousands of customers who’ve spent years encoding the DNA of their businesses using Oracle databases and development tools. To forget the customers’ and business partners’ welfare is to forget what made Oracle successful in the first place.
John Winthrop concluded his sermon with a warning to those seduced into a worship of material profits. To forget values such as justice and mercy is to forget the common weal. To forget the common weal is to forget the source of prosperity.
And to forget the source of prosperity is the kind of pride that inevitably leads to a fall.
Pirate captains, the really successful ones that is, had something in common with the ancient Polynesian voyagers, arguably the best navigators of the open ocean. In the worlds of the late Micronesian Navigator Mau Piailug, successful leadership requires three qualities:
Fierceness
Strength
Wisdom
You don’t normally think of pirates and wisdom in the same sentence. But the really great pirate captains did indeed have their share of wisdom.
The top-earning pirate captain of all time
Bartholomew Roberts, sometimes known as Black Bart, was the most successful pirate of all time. Roberts was a Welsh pirate who raided ships off America and West Africa between 1719 and 1722.
The most successful pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy, Black Bart left Captain Kidd, BlackBeard and BlueBeard in the dust!
Two years after Black Bart was made captain he had:
# Accumulated over 51 million pounds worth of treasure
# Taken close to 470 ships throughout the Americas, Africa and Europe
Accounting for two centuries of inflation, this would be a pretty good track record for a self-made man even by Silicon Valley standards.
Black Bart was strong, fierce, and apparently pretty wise too.
The wisdom of mandatory goodwill to fellow shipmates was well understood by most pirate captains. Essentially, pirates had their own version of Aloha, part of the value system that held ancient Polynesian crews together on voyages of exploration around the Pacific in the days of celestial navigation.
Pirate captains had a strict code of conduct for their crew, and exceptions were not tolerated. Here is an example from The Pirate Code of Conduct – Bartholomew Roberts Shipboard Articles of 1721:
ARTICLE VIII – None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man’s quarrel shall be ended on shore.
As with Polynesian voyaging captains, so with pirate captains:
NO FIGHTING THE WRONG PEOPLE DURING THE MISSION! OR ELSE.
I believe that uber-Pirate Black Bart and legendary celestial navigator Mau Piailug would advise Larry Ellison the same way regarding the Golden Gate Yacht Club’s leadership in the next America’s Cup.
Next time, be strong enough to think big picture. Be the navigator for the America’s Cup ecosystem, not just the America’s Cup yacht race. Accept that the multi-challenger nature of the event is what makes it important to a world audience. As with enterprise computing, so with yacht racing: harming the customers is probably going to come back to bite you.
Next time, think wisely about the right and wrong people to fight. Extend your Aloha to the America’s Cup ecosystem partners. Don’t fight inside the ecosystem, even if some of the players get under your skin. Collaborate with officials on creating a level playing field for competition. Compromise with competitors on the rules of play with the best interest of the audience at heart.
As always, compete fiercely in the race at sea.
Be strong and wise as well as fierce. Next time, make it a victory that everybody can enjoy.
Ditto that advice for Oracle’s preemptory treatment of the Itanium ecosystem.
Don’t think that customers are part of the ‘ohana? Don’t believe that business partners are in the same boat? These folks certainly do:
Enterprise systems is an interdependent web of existence. Mindful of this, a wise leader provides incentives to make certain choices and provides adequate time for change.
A wise leader doesn’t suddenly say to customers and partners,
“I’ve made an arbitrary decision in my own self interest: obey or walk the plank.”
How should customers respond to Oracle’s plans to discontinue support for software running on Intel’s Itanium platform? With moral outrage and financial sanctions, that’s how.
Enterprise information systems are not business relationships of finite duration for their customers. The relationship is more like a marriage. Enterprise systems are lifetime commitments for the businesses, governments and institutions involved.
And it’s not a traditional marriage, it’s a plural marriage. Corporate data and business process software are co-creations of independent software vendors, system integrators, in-house software developer and end users.
When it comes to the Global 5,000 businesses, the likes of IBM, HP, Oracle Microsoft, Unisys and CA are all in the same accounts with WiPro and Tata. And Google, Apple, Amazon and countless companies you’ve never heard of. Governments and institutions are in the same situation.
And now we have bad behavior and major marital discord on our hands. Again!
Some things never change
Even after three decades of progress on open standards, a few things remain true.
Open systems are lot like broccoli. It’s good for you, but not everybody likes it and some people find it difficult to digest.
It is in the financial interest of vendors to lock customers in.
New technology comes in all the time, and choices continue to explode.
The result: as with supermarkets, so with enterprise vendors; choices abound. For every bunch of raw broccoli customers can take home and cook up, there is a bag of crispy chips and a box of yummy brownies they can snack on right away. Shoppers’ brains tell them they should consider antioxidants and fibre, but their stomachs tell them they’re in a hurry and need to eat now.
It has been very difficult for CIOs to keep their options open. Because of the complexity of enterprise systems, the prospect of one throat to choke is an overwhelming temptation.
Even though CIOs know that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, businesses, governments and institutions have not been vigilant about maintaining the option of a second source in critical areas of the enterprise infrastructure.
Thus, switching costs remain huge. The database area is where CIOs have allowed themselves to become most vulnerable.
And the database vendor grown most fat and happy has chosen now to act really dumb.
Oracle has unilaterally decided to stop all development on Intel’s 64-bit Itanium chip. Responsible vendors evolve processor architectures with plenty of notice, up to 10 years, to enable CIOs to make and execute their own plans when it is convenient for their businesses. This time, Oracle has chosen deliberately to trigger an earthquake under the feet of HP-UX and VMS customers using Oracle’s database and development environment.
And lest we forget, Oracle is not just a database vendor.
Oracle has also discontinued development for PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and every other product in the Oracle portfolio that runs on Itanium. So this is not just a man-made earthquake for the customers. It is a man-made tsunami as well. Thanks!
Déjà vu all over again
Back in the late 1980s, I was in my office at the Yankee Group peacefully working on a forecast for the industrial automation market. The phone rang. It was a conference call. The CIOs of three of the major auto makers were hatching a plan to escape from IBM’s clutches. Was I available as a hostage negotiator? That’s how I became the Open Systems Advisor.
We rounded up our friends at 50 multinational enterprises, flew to Brussels, and met with the X/Open vendors to get specific about a multi-vendor version of SAA.
After all their attempts to reason with IBM failed, customers had to take action and switch vendors.
In 1992, at the height of its fat-dumb-and-happy period, IBM management was astounded by a $5 billion loss, the largest in the history of business.
Lou Gerstner got the unenviable job of reforming IBM’s misguided ways.
Today, IBM has proven that leopards can change their spots. The New Blue has proven to itself that fair play actually works better than lock in.
Fool me once, shame on you
Jerking customers around on mission-critical software components is a serious issue with material consequences for businesses, institutions and governments. IMHO, to do so is to demonstrate an arrogant irresponsibility that has lost touch with reality.
Arbitrarily informing customers that you’re suddenly discontinuing development for Itanium systems is a cheap trick that erodes Oracle’s moral authority to lead.
Maybe Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd will learn a lesson from history. Maybe they will not have to personally experience the consequences of railroading their Itanium customers into a stockyard pen.
Perhaps they will come to their senses, man up to their kuleana and extend a little consideration.
Or perhaps they are just having us on. Joking around, like in the old days.
Perhaps @Oracle will tweet “April Fool! Gotcha!”
Fool me twice, shame on me
CIOs, you have a great opportunity. Reconfigurable IT infrastructure available by the shipping container is completely changing the economics of the data center operation.
CIOs, new technology, at new price points, are creating new possibilities. You have important new options in the IT-ownership model as cloud services become mission-critical.
Oracle’s behavior should be a warning to you. You must control your own destiny. You must:
Maintain vendor discipline by maintaining viable second sources
Guard your business DNA, and not allow it to become the chattel property of any one supplier
Open systems are your insurance policy. Open systems promote competition. Competition among your suppliers gives you business choices. Choices give you fair prices and reasonable business policies. Choices prevent anti-competitive vendor behavior like Oracle’s.
Now is the time to reconsider the meaning of portability and interoperability in the new world of IT sourcing options.
Alternatively, if you prefer the simplicity of a single-vendor solution, and consciously choose to be locked in, you would do well to consider the character of the vendor who holds the keys to your kingdom.
Meanwhile, CIOs, if you have to get tough with Larry and Mark, it is your kuleana to do what needs to be done.
As quality of leadership, aloha is an attitude and a value system that helps create thriving relationships that endure. If you are in the type of business that can benefit from repeat customers and long-term partners (and who isn’t?), you may want to read the last post. But there is more to aloha than good manners. It is part of a larger value system.
Native Hawaiians will be the first to tell you that aloha is much misunderstood and certainly doesn’t stand alone. Aloha is one of many values and guiding principles passed on as part of cultural knowledge taught by Hawaiian Kumus, cultural practitioners and teachers. Hawai‘i residents will tell you that the traditional Hawaiian values play a large role in the thriving multiculturalism of modern society and business in the 50th State.
I’ve studied the value system by reading books, attending conferences, consulting with Kumus and kūpuna (elders) whenever I get the opportunity, and participating in the local economy as a business owner.
Obviously, there are greater authorities on the Hawaiian style leadership than I: those of native Hawaiian descent and kama‘aina, or longtime Hawai‘i residents, who grew up in the multicultural social and business environment of the Hawaiian Islands. And, as would be true anywhere else in the world, the right list of values for leadership is open to discussion. People in Hawai‘i love to discuss what is truly the right thing to do, what is pono, under any circumstance. For example, Hawai‘i is the only state in the Union with its own Wikipedia page on etiquette!
For those interested in more reading about on the values of Hawai‘i as applied to the business and financial world, I recommend:
I offer my own explanation of the leadership style of the Polynesian navigator because I believe it is a message that the world outside Hawai‘i needs to hear, and to hear very strongly.
I explain leadership as I see it with only the greatest respect to Hawaiian leaders and navigators. I have the indigenous sensibility to see to the heart of the matter and the Western education and conditioning to “net it out” for the malihini. So, friends, permit me, and help me with your feedback to rectify any misapprehension.
Aloha is necessary; Kuleana is sufficient
The Polynesian navigator was essential to the life and health of his ‘ohana, or extended family group. From the fishing and trading to long-distance voyages of exploration, the navigator had the lives of his community in his hands. A leader could not gain and retain followers without demonstrating tremendous wisdom, personal integrity and responsibility for the long-term welfare of the community.
It is the personal responsibility, or kuleana, of the leader to take right actions in the long-run best interest of the community. So, in my opinion, there is one critical Hawaiian value to understand along with aloha. And that critical value is kuleana.
Kuleana is what activates and links the other values, such as pono, (doing the right thing), kākou (we are all in this together), ho‘ohiki, keeping promises, ‘imi ‘ike (seeking knowledge), mālama ‘āina (stewardship of the earth, or sustainability) and all the rest you could read about in Ku Kanaka, Stand Tall: A Search for Hawaiian Values,by George Hu‘eu Sanford Kanahele.
Just as yin and yang balance each other in Eastern philosophy, I have observed that aloha and kuleana balance each other in Hawai‘i.
Put another way, aloha for the ‘ohana is table stakes for a navigator’s leadership. The leader is, literally, finding the way into the future for everybody. A leader’s kuleana, responsibility for the welfare of the ‘ohana is how that leader is judged.
So what’s the point for global business leadership?
In Western business, we have financial incentives that complicate leadership in a way that Polynesian navigators never had to contend with.
Corporate CEOs who want to be judged successful by Wall Street must keep an eye on quarterly results and stock price appreciation. If a CEO doesn’t handle this well in the short term, that CEO won’t be around to provide wayfinding and stewardship for the long-term interdependent relationship with customers, suppliers and channel partners. So it’s a difficult balancing act.
That said, some Western business leaders have lost the plot.
In business today, leadership is both a financial and a moral responsibility.
Business leaders need aloha and kuleana for the long term AND financial success in the short term.
In the quest for financial results, some leaders have forgotten their moral responsibility to customers and partners.
What happens when leaders fail to live up to their kuleana?
You won’t really understand how aloha works unless you appreciate that it has a “tough love” side as well.
Kumu Keali‘i Reichel explains hakukole, the ancient art of dealing with bullies, cheaters and other miscreants, during a conference session at the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Music Festival 2010
Questioning somebody’s kuleana is strong stuff in Hawai‘i. It is not the same thing as stink-eye. It is not what Westerners would describe as calling somebody on his or her shit.
Questioning a leader’s kuleana is questioning a leader’s moral force.
Because Hawaiian traditions are passed orally, the Hawaiian culture is very sophisticated verbally. There are multiple levels of meaning in all the poetry and chants, and this gift for kaona, or hidden meaning, comes out in debate, criticism and verbal fisticuffs.
An often over-looked genre of Hawaiian poetry, hakukole explores issues of infidelity, inadequacy and revenge through chants, songs, proverbs and gestures that publicly ridicule and deface their chosen victims. Hakukole is derived from the Hawaiian words, haku (to weave, compose, create) and kole (raw, red, irritated).
(Incidentally, I have a category in this blog called Haku Kole, where I question the moral force of some of the leaders in my industry. It is intended for haole eyes, and spelled incorrectly so it will not be confused with the Hawaiian real thing.)
Weary of the tourist fiction that aloha is the alpha and omega of Hawaiian culture, Keali‘i Reichel has long made it a point to research, teach and lecture on the tough side of the Hawaiian culture. The rapier-witted verbal take-down, “hakukole, is an overlooked piece of who we are,” he says.
Short on aloha, kuleana, pono, lōkahi, mālama ‘āina ? Yes, there are consequences
Keali‘i Reichel opened his remarks at the Nā Hōkū Hanohano Music Festival last summer with the question, “What happens when you need to get tough?”
The answer: elegantly phrased verbal confrontation. And not in private.
Hakukole must be must chanted in a public forum, so there is an emotionally charged shaming- and-blaming, bad-PR aspect to the ridiculing, manhood-questioning or sanity-questioning nature of the particular hakukole.
Moral responsibility in a material world
In a world where business leadership was judged solely by moral standards, moral outrage, bad press and the consequent ridicule would be sufficient to bring corporate miscreants to heel.
But that is not the world we live in. In this material world, financial shunning is required as well. With a threat of regulation thrown on top.
If somebody in Hawai‘i calls you a kōlea, it is not a compliment. They're calling you a taker. As in, grow rich and fat from a relationship, then fly away.
Bad press, rants and flames can sound an alarm and perhaps raise some questions in the Boardroom. But withdrawal of business by customers and partners must be the first line of defense against egregious supplier behavior in the Western business world.
Some kinds of business relationships can be ended more quickly and easily than others.
Customers of products and services such as the information systems that support business, governments and institutions are particularly entangled with their suppliers. It is particularly important for large enterprises to look far enough beyond their software and hardware vendors’ financial performance to gain the distance required to evaluate their suppliers’ kuleana.
Customers, your relationship with your strategic suppliers cannot be summed up by a great stock price in the rear view mirror or a really great number this quarter. What is rewarded by Wall Street does not necessarily signify a good, responsible steward of your best interests for the next ten years. It may well be that a smaller-share, more humble player may be a much better long-term partner for your company than its current stock price would indicate. As an enterprise database supplier, for example, is a Unisys really more risky than an Oracle?
Customers, it is your kuleana to make a wise long-term choice.
The discovery and colonization of the Hawaiian Islands by ancient Polynesian navigators is one of the greatest feats of open-ocean sailing.
How great a feat? Take a good look at the Pacific Ocean. It is the size of the surface of the moon. The Hawaiian Islands are like tiny specs. These are long distances to travel in a wooden canoe.
Navigating an area the size of the surface of the moon, tiny wooden voyaging canoes were the space-ships of our ancestors
The trans-Pacific voyages that are legendary in Polynesian cultures are now well documented by Western science.
Quoted in London’s Daily Telegraph, Dr. Marshall Weisler of the University of Queensland said that the journey between Hawai‘i and Tahiti “now stands as the longest uninterrupted maritime voyage in human prehistory”. It was “mind-boggling,” he continued, “how Polynesian settlers found their way from one speck of land to another and back again, colonizing the last uninhabited parts of the planet.”
The prowess of the ancient Polynesians has also been proven by the Hawaiians themselves. In 1976 a reinvented ocean-going sailing canoe, the Hōkūle‘a, successfully sailed from Hawai‘i to Tahiti without instruments. Since then, the Hōkūle‘a has sailed more than 125,000 nautical miles (equivalent to six times around the Earth), also without instruments. These achievements provided evidence for intentional two-way voyaging throughout Oceania, supporting a hypothesis that explained the Asiatic origin of Polynesians.
During the many voyages of Hōkūle‘a over the last 35 years, the Polynesian Voyaging Society has re-learned a lot about the ancient art of wayfinding — what it takes to navigate tens of thousands of miles under sail across the open ocean with only human senses, intelligence and spirit to find the way.
In so doing, they have arrived at a unique leadership style, which adds Aloha and kuleana to qualities typically admired in Western business leadership. I will talk about Aloha in this post, and get to kuleana, the tough-love part of Hawaiian-style leadership, in the next post.
This article is dedicated me ke aloha pumehana to the memory of Herb Kawaini Kāne, an inspirational leader by the standards of any MBA program, a light for indigenous people everywhere, and a friend to my ‘ohana.
Hōkūle‘a amazed the world when she arrived in Tahiti in 1976
The necessity of Aloha
What do I mean by a unique leadership style? Consider the words of the late Hawaiian leader Myron ‘Pinky’ Thompson, a leader of the Polynesian Voyaging Society during the 1980s and 1990s, as quoted in Ben Finney’s Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging:
“What struck me about voyaging was that before you set out to find a new island you had to have a vision of that island over the horizon… Then you had to figure out how you are going to get there; you had to make a plan for trying out new things. Finally, you had to get out there and take a risk. And on the voyage you had to bind the crew to each other with Aloha so they could work together to overcome the risk and achieve the vision.”
Much of this description would be familiar to Western business leaders:
The need for a vision. Check.
The need for a plan. Check.
An appetite for risk. Check.
The ties of Aloha. Huh?
What is Aloha? Most Westerners know that Aloha is a precious word. As a greeting, it means both hello and goodbye, and conveys love or compassion. Easterners might equate Aloha to Namaste, or “the light within me greets the light within you.”
But that’s not all that Hawaiian language speakers and Hawai‘i residents mean when they say Aloha.
Hōkūle‘a has a lot of friends wherever she sails.
Aloha is a spirit
Have a look at the roots of the word Aloha in the Hawaiian language:
’alo To be with, come near, go with, attend, escort, accompany, share an experience, endure
oha, thriving, joyous affection, joy
hā, life energy, life, breath
Parsing this with the rules of the Hawaiian language, many arrive at a translation that describes a spirit of “joyfully sharing life”.
The idea of a spirit of joyful sharing is a new one for Western business leaders. It is just about the opposite ruthless competition. But when you think about what it takes for a group to go the distance under dangerous, uncertain circumstances, you can see how this notion of Aloha would help sustain morale and eliminate the distraction of petty conflicts.
Another translation of the Hawaiian words ‘alo, oha and hā might be “a thriving relationship that endures.” This is a wonderful description of the relationship any business, government or institution would hope to have with its information technology suppliers, products and standards.
Hōkūle‘a is small but mighty. Here she is in Yokohama Bay, Japan.
Aloha is a set of values
Whatever you personally take away from studying the individual words, there’s more to Aloha than its definition. To Hawaiian speakers and students of Hawaiian, the word Aloha has an underlying meaning, what Hawaiians would call kaona. For Hawaiians, the power (mana) of a word or a chant lies in its hidden meanings.
For example, consider the kaona implied by the roots of the compound word Hawai’i:
hā, life energy, life, breath
wai, fresh water, vital fluids
i, word/ tone of the supreme god, the initial consciousness
The word Hawai’i literally means from the breath of life is derived from the water of life is derived from the universal consciousness. Whew! This is a lot to grok.
To me, the word Hawai’i means, “we are all connected to each other and the world.” And I believe this is something that business leaders would do well to remember.
So let’s get to the kaona of the word Aloha. Techies, you will love this, ALOHA is an acronym!
A-L-O-H-A are the first letters of the Hawaiian words for values that are dearly held in Hawaii. I am speaking of values held not only by persons of Hawaiian descent, but also by residents of the state of Hawai’i and the local business community.
As an acronym, Aloha stands for an attitude that values:
A, ala, watchful, alertness
L, lōkahi, unity, harmony
O, oia’i’o, truthfulness, honesty
H, ha’aha’a, humility
A, ahonui, patient perseverance
The kaona of the word Aloha is a thought-provoking for Western business leaders. Most business leaders I know would agree that these values are essential for a thriving relationship that endures.
If you are in the type of business that needs repeat customers (and who isn’t?), then thriving relationships that endure are required for long-term success.
Historian-artist Herb Kawainui Kane was the captain of Hokulea on her first voyage to Tahiti
Polynesian Wayfinding Lessons
During the Hawaiian renaissance of the 1970s, the Hawaiian community took action to regain the cultural knowledge they had lost during the process of forced assimilation. Some of this knowledge was out there to be rediscovered readily. Other knowledge had to be reinvented through iteration and experimental archeology.
Open-ocean navigation was a particularly difficult skill to win back. The basic leadership requirements for an open-ocean navigator were clear from those with living memories, but they were almost impossibly high level:
The need for a vision
The need for a plan
An appetite for risk
The ties of Aloha
As a first step, The Polynesian Voyaging Society reinvented the double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe via a lengthy series of experiments similar (but for budget) to the development of America’s Cup yachts. To get an idea of the permutations and combinations of Polynesian and Micronesian canoe designs, check this page from the website of the late historian-artist Herb Kawainui Kāne.
Hōkūleʻa is a performance-accurate full-scale replica of a waʻa kaulua, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society was able to sail around the Hawaiian islands, no sweat! But they didn’t have a clear vision of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for deep-sea voyaging. They didn’t even know how much they didn’t know.
There was no way that a bunch of guys, however bright and fit, could just jump into the 62-foot Hōkūle‘a and find their way to Tahiti. They had an appetite for risk, not for death.
Accordingly, Polynesian Voyaging Society leaders set out to locate a teacher, or kumu. There was just one man left in the world who could help — Mau Piailug, a Micronesian navigator from the tiny Carolinian island of Satawal. Navigator Nainoa Thompson describes Satawal this way:
“Satawal is a mile and a half long and a mile wide. Population 600. Navigation’s not about cultural revival, it’s about survival. Not enough food can be produced on a small island like that. Their navigators have to go out to sea to catch fish so they can eat.”
Mau had earned the title of master navigator, or palu, by the age of 18, around the time the first American missionaries arrived in Satawal to begin the process of Western assimilation. Satawal has no natural harbor, and had not been an early target of colonization.
By the time the Polynesian Voyaging Society reached out to Mau, Westernization was far along. Navigators like Mau had long realized that unless they bequeathed their knowledge to someone, it would vanish with their last breath. Mau was generous enough to divert the next few years of his life into educating the Hōkūle‘a team, even though the knowledge of a palu was sacred to Micronesians.
Mau Piailug’s Carolinian navigation system—which relies on navigational clues using the sun and stars, winds and clouds, seas and swells, and birds and fish—was acquired through rote learning passed down through teachings in the oral tradition. As The Economist wrote in Mau’s obituary:
“Mau did not operate on latitude, longitude, angles, or mathematical calculations of any kind. He walked, and sailed, under an arching web of stars moving slowly east to west from their rising to their setting points, and knew them so well—more than 100 of them by name, and their associated stars by colour, light and habit—that he seemed to hold a whole cosmos in his head, with himself, determined, stocky and unassuming, at the nub of the celestial action.”
Avid mainland sailor Steve Thomaswas a student of non-instrument navigation and also sought out Mau Piailug as a kumu. In the early 1980s, Steve journeyed to Satawal to learn the ancient technique of star-path navigation. Steve’s research resulted in the critically acclaimed book about Mau Piailug, The Last Navigator, published in 1987. (Steve Thomas then became host of PBS This Old House, which is why his name may sound familiar.)
Mau Piailug talked to Steve about the qualities of a navigator, or palu:
“To be a palu you must have three qualities: fierceness, strength, and wisdom. The knowledge of navigation brings all three.”
Nainoa Thompson, now Hōkūle‘a’s navigator, recalled the first thing Mau said to the crew as the canoe was about to depart for Tahiti:
“Today we go to the ocean. Today if you have any problems between you, leave it on the land. Commit to the sea. Hōkūle‘a is your mother; take care of her. I am your father; listen to my words. That is how we will find the island we seek. “
As Nainoa Thompson tells it, Mau saw the crew as an ‘ohana, or family, bound by the ties of Aloha.
Entries for the 34th Americas Cup Race close on March 31, 2011.
It seems especially appropriate to ponder the contribution that modern technology and modern leadership have made to open-ocean sailing.
BMW Oracle Racing’s USA, winner of the 33rd America’s Cup Race in 2010, was the fastest, most technologically advanced trimaran the world has ever seen. Its unique wing sail propelled the giant craft at jaw-dropping 3X the speed of the wind. Bravo!
US challenger BMW Oracle Racing (L) giant trimaran and Swiss defender Alinghi huge catamaran during the opening race of the 33rd America's Cup.
The 33rd America’s Cup Race in 2010 amply demonstrated the powers of computer technology in the design of an open-ocean sailing vessel. Alas it made a less effective testimonial for modern leadership.
From the earliest planning stages, the 33rd America’s Cup Race was dominated by its two most ruthless competitors, tech titan Larry Ellison of Oracle and Swiss pharmaceutical heir Ernesto Bertarelli. The dueling billionaires stopped at nothing to win. Literally nothing.
A vitriolic multi-year court battle over the rules of the race perplexed officials, disgusted fellow sailors, strangled competition, shrank the audience and scared away sponsors.
For example, after the Golden Gate Yacht Club filed its eight lawsuit filed within a two-year period, lead counsel for the Société Nautique de Genève, Barry Ostrager of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett accused ORACLE Racing of trying to win in the courtroom rather than on the water:
“The complaint is an affront to the America’s Cup, to the UAE, to our country’s relationship with an important ally, and to the judicial process. It is just a PR stunt. There is nothing in the complaint that hasn’t been the subject of prior or pending legal proceedings. Basically, GGYC doesn’t want to race SNG on the water after it disenfranchised 19 other clubs from competing in an elimination series and dislocated hundreds of sailors and participants in the sailing industry.”
As Ellison and Bertarelli focused all their business and legal acumen on accusing each other of bending the rules and using the courtroom to delay the race until new designs could be tested, the America’s Cup grew more and more tarnished.
Sponsorship money shrank from more than $200 million in 2007 to $11 million in 2010. (That’s not a typo. That’s a 94.5% drop.)
The organizing budget reduced from a record € 230 million to just € 8 million in 2010.
Overall, the 32nd America’s Cup Race in 2007 was the third-largest sporting event in terms of gross economic impact after the football World Cup and the Olympics. The overall economic impact of the 2010 race was probably about one tenth of the $7 billion (€5B; £4.4B) figure for 2007.
Why the catastrophic decline? “Both business tycoons have prioritized their own ambition over the sport of sailing,” according to sports-marketing consultant, Jan-Kees Mons, editor of It’s All About Sports.
In his analysis, a personal grudge-match between the top dogs appears to have ruined the ecosystem of sponsors and supporters.
The Challenger Series, which had attracted 11 challengers from nine countries in 2007, was cancelled, along with major sponsorship opportunities.
Tourist events drove almost €4 billion net economic benefit for host city Valencia in 2007. In 2010, Valencian residents and visitors paid more attention to Mardi Gras than they did to the America’s Cup, which passed almost unnoticed.
So how well did the modern leadership style of ruthless competition pay off for Bertarelli and Ellison? The billionaires succeeded in devaluing the oldest sporting trophy in America, shrinking the pie for yacht racing fans, killing the ecosystem for sponsors, enriching lawyers, generating bad press, and losing a few friends.
At the end of December 2010, it was announced that BMW was bringing to a close its longstanding partnership with ORACLE Racing and thereby ending its involvement in the America’s Cup. “This was by mutual agreement of both partners,” notes the Wikipedia entry for ORACLE Racing.
The bottom line? For Ernesto Bertarelli, it was a rout on all fronts.
The 33rd America’s Cup did nothing to improve Oracle’s business reputation. But at least Larry Ellison could say that his boat won. And next time the Oracle logo will appear alone.
Fortunately, Larry Ellison has also won the chance to revive the ecosystem he helped to destroy.
So what is the lesson from the fastest boat in open-ocean racing?
Everyone, including Larry Ellison and Oracle Corporation and the victorious yacht USA, exists in an interdependent web of existence.
For the benefit of the ruthlessly competitive, let me put this in pugilistic terms:
“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Golden Gate Yacht Club in San Francisco will host the 34th America’s Cup in 2013. The challenging is Club Nautico di Roma. “Mascalzone Latino” owned by world champion sailor Vincenzo Onorato will be Larry Ellison’s chief competitor in the race. Onorato will also be Ellison’s chief collaborator in restoring the America’s Cup to the luster it had before Ellison and Bertarelli got so personally involved.
According to sports marketing consultant, Jan-Kees Mons, editor of It’s All About Sports, there are three essential elements for making up the lost ground:
The Americas Cup should be a multi-challenger event again
There should be upfront agreement on rules and regulations
It should be easier to enter the event
Jan-Kees Mons credits Larry Ellison with “encouraging” comments regarding the necessity for a level playing field for all competitors to bring sponsors and fans back to sailing’s pinnacle event in 2013.
Thanks for the information, @JanKeesMons. Keep us posted on happens next in the world of yacht racing.
In a future post I will offer some leadership lessons from another group of open ocean sailors, not racers but navigators.
Oracle Stops All Software Development For Intel Itanium Microprocessor
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., March 22, 201
After multiple conversations with Intel senior management Oracle has decided to discontinue all software development on the Intel Itanium microprocessor. Intel management made it clear that their strategic focus is on their x86 microprocessor and that Itanium was nearing the end of its life
Both Microsoft and RedHat have already stopped developing software for Itanium. HP CEO Leo Apotheker made no mention of Itanium in his long and detailed presentation on the future strategic direction of HP
Oracle will continue to provide customers with support for existing versions of Oracle software products that already run on Itanium.
I could hardly believe my eyes. Apparently, Oracle has absolutely no concept of karma, and is totally unaware of any helpful clichés reflecting the collected wisdom of humanity. Let me share my personal opinion
10. What goes around comes around.
Oracle is talking smack about its partner, Intel. Turn signals about processor architectures in enterprise computing are typically issued eight to ten years in advance, to allow customers to prepare. By saying it will discontinue all software development, Oracle makes it sound like Intel will let the axe fall on Itanium any minute now. This effectively implies that Intel has lied to its customers and/or is about to let them down. I believe that Oracle will soon learn that Intel does not react well to character defamation.
By implying that the x86 will emerge as the winner take all, Oracle thereby implies that its own SPARC will be one of the losers. This will leave Oracle selling x86, the processor architecture brought to you by the company Oracle says is untrustworthy and/or a liar. (What can explain this self-defeating plan? SUNstroke from too much time at sea on the corporate yacht?)
Oracle is also picking on HP, a company which styles itself a trusted advisor to enterprise IT. For all I know, new CEO Léo Apotheker could have been under an Intel NDA at the time. He is probably too diplomatic to point this out in a vitriolic way. But HP is perfectly capable of making a strong counter-argument to customers. In fact, to the extent that Oracle scares customers away from Itanium to x86, HP will probably retain its hardware business. But Oracle may not retain the software business.
9. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Oracle is threatening to deliberately inconvenience HP-UX and OpenVMS customers that run the Oracle database on Itanium and are locked into Oracle’s programming environment. Breaking up a marriage is always hard, and most often involves some collateral damage. But the folks bearing the brunt of this business break-up aren’t defenseless children. They are some of the largest and savviest businesses, governments and institutions in the world. They can recognize exactly what’s happening.
I would hate to be the facilitator at Oracle’s next event for customer CEOs. Even Mark Hurd’s trademark eye-candy approach to such meetings may not be able to stop the bloodshed.
8. As FUD flinging goes, this is rather lame.
Oracle is trying to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt. But upon whom will it reflect badly? First, it is not Oracle’s place to announce Intel’s long-term news. Hello! Second, it is preposterously disingenuous to assert that the lack of specific commentary in a new CEO’s coming-out remarks indicates that HP customers have not been briefed on every step of the plan regarding Itanium. HP would never break up with customers via a press release.
Moreover, if changing processor architectures really were impossibly difficult, and had never been done before by HP and everyone else still in the business, those of us who hadn’t been clever enough to buy an IBM 360 would still be using the DEC PDP-11 or the HP 1000 or the IBM System 34.
7. Those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
Is anybody out there old enough to remember IBM shortly before the arrival of Lou Gerstner? If not, let me share a look down memory lane. Big Blue had so alienated customers with its heavy-handed management of pricing, arbitrary upgrade schedules and inconsiderate product discontinuations that it had hardly a friend left in the world. As a Yankee Group analyst back in the 1980s, I interviewed plenty of mutinous CIOs. The company who thought it had customers wrapped around its little finger suddenly found itself reading this embarrassing headline in The New York Times:
This is a reminder of how far a company can fall after pride as great as IBM’s was then and Oracle’s is now.
In the early 1990s, IBM customers were so alienated that we used to joke, “If IBM wanted fresh business, IBM would first have to send a space probe to discover some friendly Martians.” This is the problem that motivated incoming CEO Lou Gerstner to say, “The last thing IBM needs is a vision.” To this day, IBM is a chastened entity. Big Blue is no longer run as a feudal kingdom where customers are indentured servants
6. Customers hired Oracle to replace the bully, not to become the bully.
Customers shopping for a commercial-quality alternative to the closed systems of the 1980s and early 1990s made a bet on HP and Oracle as a team. Microsoft was not a serious player in the enterprise back then. Oracle was. If I, as the Open Systems Advisor, can still remember the promises Oracle and HP made, so can the customers.
5. What is suitable for the underdog is not suitable for the top dog.
Those of us who grew up in this industry really enjoyed watching the young Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy and Bill Gates in action. The stinging one-liners! The caustic analogies! The frat-house insults! The second-hand testosterone affected us all! Back in the day when these young upstarts were helping customers break the shackles of IBM’s lock-in, we all had good fun. It was great to see small underdog businesses getting some news coverage for their thought leadership.
But time flies by. Bill Gates sanded off his rough edges long ago and chose to make a meaningful contribution to the world. Scott McNealy, too, has moved on to the giving-back stage of life. Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd are still choosing to be remembered as ruthless competitors. As the now-somewhat-more-tactful Scott McNealy said recently, theirs may be a great approach to capitalism, but it is not a good one.
4. Oracle press release isn’t even worthy of the frat-house approach.
If we were all thirtysomething again and it was OK to do business by the headline-grabbing insult method, this would still be a pretty damp squib. Let’s see: let down your customers, diss two of your partners and shoot yourself in the foot, all at the same time. And do this not on April Fool’s Day but the week before!
3. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
HP was a valued partner to Oracle back in the day when both companies broke out from the pack. So now, 20-plus years later, is it wrong for Oracle to want to change its business model — even if it means disadvantaging its former partner and inconveniencing their joint customers? Not necessarily. Hard choices are often necessary.
But if Oracle doesn’t handle the transition well, it will damage its relationship not only with customers but also with its other partners. Customers and partners alike are saying to themselves, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Oracle’s arbitrary actions are leaving its channel partners with baffled customers and a lot of explaining to do. Why would they put themselves out in the future for a company this inconsiderate?
2. Don’t fight fire with gasoline.
Larry and Mark, this looks like a move to get even with Léo and the HP board. By imperiling the business of your own customers, you’re inviting competitors into the ring and forcing Intel and HP to rush to their own defense. And I am fairly confident that bad press, rants by analysts and flames by bloggers are nothing compared to what IBM is going to say about this behind closed doors, let alone your alienated partners HP and Intel.
Some IBMer is probably on the speaker with your customer’s CEO right now. IBM may well be saying, “Oracle just flushed 20% of the UNIX customers down the drain. Will your UNIX be next? Why not switch to DB/2 now?” And the CEO is probably thinking, “Hmmm, which two strategic suppliers make most sense: the smarter planet, the trusted advisor, or the frat-house bullies.” When IBM gets into the picture, Oracle risks losing the customer’s software business as well as its hardware business
Oracle has apparently decided to burn its bridges with HP and Intel. This shortsighted and unnecessary move pushes HP and Intel closer to each other and to Microsoft. Intel is not exactly without power to exact a quiet, behind-the-scenes revenge on the common enemy. In the software arena, HP is not exactly friendless, unimaginative, without resources, low in testosterone or lacking in experienced supervision. In a world moving back to the integrated enterprise stack, HP is bound to look back at its decision to exit so many of the system-level software businesses, and to make some different moves in Enterprise 2.0. Today there is a lot of opportunity for convergence (HP-speak for eliminating costly clutter) in the software space. If HP and Microsoft can collaborate on de-cluttering the stack of Oracle products, they will do so.
1. With leadership comes responsibility.
This kind of software is not a toy. Your customers are not in a boat race. This is a serious issue, with material consequences for customers. The database is what stores the operational DNA for businesses, institutions and governments. Programming environments like Oracle SQL Developer are how business processes are instantiated and evolved. Mess with this stuff, and you mess with business-critical processes. A vendor that has been so trusted has a moral responsibility to consider the consequences to its customers.
Larry, Mark: if you somehow missed the Parable of the Talents, let me put it to you another way. Kuleana, bra! That’s Hawaiian for “man up to your responsibility!”
“Expertise IRL doesn’t necessarily add up to authority in social media,” I told a client recently. Sigh! This is always a tough sell for the Enterprise 2.0 crowd.
A tweet about a show on NPR show debating the future of network TV reminded me of how long it’s been since I watched the stuff. I tuned in for a look, and and immediately saw a “Capital E” Expert, a Dr SoAndSo, one of the competitors to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta.
“It’s not too late for a flu shot, sneeze into your sleeve if there are no Kleenexes handy and keep washing those hands!”
“Not much new news here,” I thought, tuning out. “But for sure a story I can use.”
Doctor friends aside, I don’t see many doctors professionally. They never seem to have anything to say about the simple, everyday, down-to-earth things that trouble me. I’m still searching for a way to short-cut colds and flu. Aren’t we all! Doctors and Experts are still not delivering much news we can connect to everyday life.
Years ago, I was surprised by the seemingly overnight success of the now widely advertised Airborne, a natural supplement “created by a school teacher.” A second-grade teacher, no less.
I like Airborne and can actually notice a difference that is perhaps unrelated to the extra liquid consumption. But in retrospect, I’m amazed that I ever bought Airborne in the first place.
Apparently, I failed to ask myself:
Why would a second grade teacher need a frequent flyer medication?
Why would anyone promote a cure for the common cold as “invented by a schoolteacher.”
Hmmm…. If anyone who’s approachable and warm can really be an expert on any subject of their choosing, Thiokol should have said this to NASA,
“But the Shuttle’s O-Rings were tested by General Mills and endorsed by Cheery O’Leary, the Cheerios friendly bee!“
No, this would never have happened.
How do warm and approachable people become confused with experts?
Going back to the question of “How do warm and approachable people become confused with experts?” It’s important to remember that good advice can indeed come from any source. Here’s the insight. The only thing you really need to know before taking non-expert advice is whether the source is authoritative, or widely seen as trustworthy. For example:
Mentors as they are to the next generation of our world citizenry, schoolteachers are some of our society’s most trusted authorities, though not necessarily themselves doctors.
Well-respected book reviewers on Amazon.com are considered authoritative as critical thinkers, though not necessarily themselves experts on the topics of the books they review.
The converse is not necessarily true. People who are great experts are not necessarily prepared to qualify themselves as the greatest authorities. They can go spectacularly awry by missing or over-reacting to opportunities to showcase their expertise.
For example, back in 2003, Kraft laid off around 6,000 people and took a charge of $1.2 Billion. Why? Consumers had been cutting back on cookies and crackers in favor of high-protein snacks. Believe it or not, one of the world’s leading experts on cheese, a company qualified to be an unquestioned authority on low-carb eating, the very people who spell cheese “K-R-A-F-T” are the very same people who missed the low-carb craze. Go figure.
Thankfully for dieters, there were enterprising entrepreneurs back in 2003 who glommed onto the low-carb craze and became instant authorities on what they called The Low-Carb Lifestyle. The were not doctors, they were not dietitians. They were not even experts on cheese. They were mom-and-pop businesses, promoting themselves as authorities via what were known at the time as e-Zines. And they began selling products like Tibetan Yak Cheese and Zero-Carb Cheese Straws on Amazon e-Shops.
At the time, did I or any other dieter stop to ask:
“Why am I buying Yak-cheese snacks on the advice of a retired police officer through Earth’s largest bookstore?”
No. We did not.
Expansion beyond books into new categories such as cheese helped Amazon to profitability for the first time in 2003. Instant authorities identified a solution to every problem jumped in wherever they saw a need.
And the online authority phenomenon marches on. Belly fat trimming approaches pop up everywhere on the web. Nowadays, you don’t even have to know anybody or Google anything to get diet advice from people who have singlehandedly outsmarted the doctors, the scientific experts and the entire medical establishment and can sell you a solution to all your bad eating and exercise habits with a nutritional supplement that costs $39.
But have the deep-study experts kept up with the online authorities?
Some of the experts are catching up. For example, about a year ago I wrote a post about The Economist’s and CNN’s lame coverage of cloud computing services. These expert journalists had fallen right into the insta-authority trap, and wrote the whole article about Microsoft, Google and Apple.
Back then I speculated: Are IBM and other vendors behind or inside the cloud unlucky, invisible, or simply under-sold? Now I realize that IBM and other experts may have been hobbleded by their own expertise.
Enterprise 2.0 vendors, for example, are comfortable with the assumption that they know everything about technology. Some, even the companies who run the clouds, are surprised that they’re not more successful at going viral with their messages. The smug-mugs are amazed that the amateurs and Johnnie-Come-Latelys get more attention! What the Enterprise 2.0 crowd doesn’t realize is this:
Social networking is not about expertise with technology, it is about affability with social connections.
And this explains why Microsoft, Google and Apple get more coverage than the experts from Enterprise 2.0 Land. Apple, Microsoft and Google have one key thing in common with The Economist and CNN. All day every day they’re engaging ordinary consumers online. Reporters rightly recognize a certain authority in Google, Apple and Microsoft.
But the mainstream journalists are still failing to balance their stories by looking for expertise in addition to authority. IBM and companies of that ilk have forgotten more about running clouds for businesses than these companies know. Yes, even the water-walking Google. The precise fact that Google is a such an expert in innovating makes it hard for the company to understand organizations of mere mortals who need to follow a leader one step at a time.
What’s changed now is that the likes of IBM are looking for ways of becoming an authority trusted by John Q. Public as well as an expert advisor to IT. For example, just last night I RSVP’d for a Mass Innovation Night hosted at IBM’s Waltham office. Of course there was a “Tweet This” button to put a penny in IBM’s cup of main-street relatability. Efforts like this are going to build awareness IBM’s reputation as an authority.
Bottom line: Most of the Enterprise 2.0 egg-heads should stay in the ivory towers honing their expertise at keeping the clouds aloft. Let them debate lofty arcana with their expert peers in esoteric cyber spaces. Maybe someday they’ll get a call from The Economist, the one business magazine that still believes in long-form content. But they shouldn’t confuse this with gaining business traction through social media.
Until Enterprise 2.0 realizes that expertise doesn’t deliver authority in today’s world, they won’t realize that a whole different skill set is required to tweet to Main Street.
When yoga wear phenom Lululemon Athletica first invaded my fair city, it made me proud of my Canadian roots.
How young and fresh the clothes!
How earnest the Lululemon staff as they took down every customer’s every word of feedback and folded it into a pouch bound for Vancouver. Every time I pointed out that the company designs for only one body type, the pear-shaped pretzel, they solemnly agreed, and underlined the word “pear”.
And how effortlessly did Lululemon master word-of-mouth-marketing. The company went viral in the yoga community without any technology even. They did it with the iconic reusable shopping bag cum manifesto.
Lululemon Athletica's life manifesto on its iconic reusable shopping bag
That was then.
In December 2010, Lululemon Athletica said it would voluntarily withdraw some its iconic reusable shopping bags due to lead content and resulting questions over the environmental disposal of the bags. Not so cool.
Lululemon store at the crest of the company's wave circa MLK Day 2009
This is now.
I recently heard from my dear friend DK that Lululemon Atheletica yoga trousers have been selected as one of Oprah’s Favorite Things.
At first blush, this seemed incredible. Lululemon garments aren’t cut large enough to fit most gals the size of Oprah, DK and I. I was astounded. At Lululemon, fat is defined as larger than size 12. If one is size 14, a size 16 or, heaven forbid, larger, it’s impossible to shop at Lululemon and not feel fat.
Was the firm ready to listen to reason? Had they finally twigged onto the fact that the ability to afford $98 yoga trousers rises with age, as does the waistline. Was this a long-overdue attack of common sense? I simply had to investigate.
I hot-footed it immediately to my local Lululemon store. I expected a giant display trumpeting “Favorite Things.” But no. No display of Oprah Pants. This was odd, from a firm that was so keen to merchandise OMbamaPants back in 2009.
When I got to the Lululemon store in Boston, the store seemed deserted, except for the customers. Nobody was working the sales floor. All the gals were chatting in the back folding clothes. But I’m not shy. I broke up their party.
Eventually, we determined that the Oprah pants are “the fat pants, the ones that fit realllllly big.”
As I eyeballed it by comparing styles side by side, a size 12 in Oprah pants looks has about 4 inches more fabric in the seat and 6 inches more in the leg than a size 12 in a similar style. Yes, it’s true. Stylish Canadian Yoga brand Lululemon’s best seller is fat pants!
When you’re selling fat pants, you apparently don’t need the earnestly folksy marketing come-on. I experienced a descent-to-reality sensation akin to that of a young journalist discovering peering behind the curtain of cloud computing and discovering, egad, a mainframe!
But I was not too shocked to buy the trousers. As DK had pointed out, Oprah had been quoted to have said about this favorite gear, “anything that cuts your butt in half should be your favorite thing too! ” The sales gal assured me, “the larger ladies like them.” When DK tried them on, she had to agree. I’m heading back for a second pair.
Moral of the story: a stylish seat style sells, and a seat that’s big enough sells absolutely.
When Leo Apotheker was hired to succeed Mark Hurd as CEO of HP, the newspaper headlines struck me as odd:
“HP hires new CEO,” was the statement I read.
Why not, “HP Hires Léo Apotheker as CEO”?
After HP named Apotheker CEO, its stock was down 4% in after-hours trading. When you do the math, that’s $4.45 billion in lost shareholder value! Hardly a vote of confidence
I suppose nobody but we old-timers know “Léo who?” Or “Why Léo?” Or “Why hire this skill set now? Let me try to explain.
At a surface level, the dynamics appear obvious. Léo Apotheker spent 22 years at Oracle’s arch-rival, SAP. It’s as if the HP Board is growling to Larry Ellison, “We’re not going to take this lying down!” To rub it in further, Ray Lane, COO of Oracle in a former life is the new non-executive chairman of HP.
Of course Larry Ellison came right back with a counter-attack. He’s accused HP of hiring someone who had a hand on the helm when SAP was accused of stealing Oracle’s intellectual property. This is a high-horse position for Ellison. He’s just hired Mark Hurd, who surely knows a thing or two about HP intellectual property, as Oracle co-President. Maybe he’s running scared…
That said, I don’t think “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ” was the motivation for bringing Apotheker on board at HP.
It may signal a shift in HP’s strategy with respect to software. Léo Apotheker is a software guy. Software is an arena that HP never really grokked. It’s an area that HP’s major competitors in the enterprise know intimately. It’s an area where the storm-clouds of change augur significant opportunity. And it is an opportunity for HP to improve both growth and margins.
But why hire a man with Apotheker’s skill set at this moment in time?
Some have criticized the hire saying, correctly, Apotheker’s kind of software is yesterday’s news.
Others carp that his leadership is unproven: He was, after all, forced out after a very brief tenure as CEO of SAP.
So what could possibly make Léo Apotheker relevant now?
In the last post, I wrote that the singularity is at hand in the enterprise. Businesses, governments and institutions are seriously considering a massive IT refresh. Don’t believe me? In its 20 Questions section, The Financial Times recently interviewed LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman. When asked, what’s the next big thing, he replied, “Enterprise 2.0″
What happens inside an enterprise data center or a cloud-computing bunker is known only to a select few. It may be opaque. But, let me assure you, it is anything but boring.
Changing out enterprise systems is like changing a jet engine while the plane is in flight. Changing the workings of a cloud is like replacing the Air Traffic Control System while planes are moving through the airspace. It’s expensive, risky and emotionally grueling for the customer’s Board, senior leadership team and CIO. For the vendor, it’s like leading a camel through the eye of a needle.
Who knows how to lead this kind of a sale? Léo Apotheker.
Apotheker had experience in the last big wave of change in business-critical systems. SAP, like Oracle, inspired customers to jump onto a new wave in front of the Year 2000 deadline. Back in the 1990s, many customers chose to migrate to commercial software rather than spend good money repairing outdated systems. Twenty years later, it’s time to do it all again! Apotheker is a man who knows how to move customers past paralysis by analysis. He knows how to help Boards overcome fear of the unknown and ride a new infrastructure wave.
I’m not worried that the choice of Apotheker is focused on the enterprise at the expense of other areas of HP. Each business has competent leaders in place. I am looking forward to see what Mr. Apotheker can make of the singularity at hand as businesses, governments and institutions move to Enterprise 2.0.
Having watched “Clash of the Upstarts” back in the 1990s, I am all set for “Clash of the Titans.” Somebody pass the popcorn!
