Conference 7.286::digital

    
    
    Care to guess who the permanent(?) replacement will be?
    

	Is this a promotion, demotion, or lateral move?

			Alfred

    
    Ok, who rattled the birdcage?
    
    ;-)
    
    -Ed
    

    I do not believe that Don Zereski's new job is a promotion.  He will
    have to find new business and develop new revenue opportunities or he
    will be gone in no time.  I agree with a previous noter's
    reply...someone just rattled the birdcage.  Don appears to have landed
    on a new purch for now.

re: .3

>	Is this a promotion, demotion, or lateral move?

It all depends on how you want to look at it.

1.	I would be very surprised if this move caused any change 
	whatsoever in salary or level.

2.	It seems clear to me that his area of responsibility has been 
	drastically reduced, in real terms.

In the old days, an announcement that someone was being reassigned to 
"Special Projects and Long-range Planning" was generally received as a 
notice that the person was being relieved of their responsibilities, and no 
longer had a real job (or, alternatively, were being put in a holding area 
for an anticipated new job).  Eventually, these people either left Digital,
or were given real jobs.  Over the years, the corporation seems to have
gotten more creative in making these types of announcements.

Ray

    re: .1
    
    	I got it Dave!  Very good!
    

    re: .2  permanent replacement
    
    I can only hope it will be someone from the outside who can bring
    real sales experience and a successful track record to the table.
    The sales organization needs real leadership to help them make the
    leap to more successful methods of selling our products and services.
    And we need someone who is not caught up in the political wars that
    seem pervasive in sales management.
    
    The same comments go for a new head of marketing as well.
    
    Geoff
    

Jim

Would you care to share this with the rest of us, or is this one of the
"you have to be there" variety?

Bob

I was hoping that the general level of clarity would increase under BP and that
senior executives would no longer be given "ambigious" assignments at 
considerable salaries. When a senior executive moves within DEC we shouldn't have
to "figure out" if it's a promotion, demotion, or lateral move. If he's adding
value to the company that should be clear. If he's being asked to step aside that
should be clear as well. 

    
    .8
    	Think you've hit the nail on the head; BP himself illuded to 
    bringing in someone from the outside with, among other things,
    "talent".  I really saw that in writing and at that point I wonder
    how long it would before Don Zereski was somehow moved.  Mr. Palmer
    is living up to his "Rapid Robert" nickname.
    

    RE: .10
    
    I agree...
    
    Is he in or out?!?!
    
    For the life of me, I can't figure out what Jack Smith and Don Zereski
    can/will do to improve revenue that they could not have done in the
    last several years when it was their jobs to do just that!!!!!
    
    If he's out, what are we waiting for...  Fire him (have him resign) and
    blame the Q1 results on him.  I actully heard a rumor that he had 
    resigned.
    
    Can anyone speculate on the benefit to Digital of moving a senior exec
    to the side instead of firing him?  I can't.
    
    Ken Slattery

>    Can anyone speculate on the benefit to Digital of moving a senior exec
>    to the side instead of firing him?  I can't.

    I guess that if the company started firing senior managers it might be
    bad for the morale of other senior managers. Their performance might
    be adversely impacted by such activity. 

    			Alfred

    
    >I guess that if the company started firing senior managers it might be
    >bad for the morale of other senior managers. Their performance might
    >be adversely impacted by such activity.
    
    Heaven forbid! hell they might even worry about keeping their jobs
    and actually do something instead of hobnob and attend meetings!
    
    -Ed
    

Do the grunts in the field get special assignments?  I think NOT.

If he's responsible, TSFO him, Fire him, or ask him for his resignation.

Let's make the playing field even for everyone!

Keith R>

    re. 15
    
    Good point..everyone knows that the grunts do NOT get special
    assignments.  When will senior management be treated the same?
    
    Anyone in senior management with salaries in the $150,000 - $350,000
    or more per year should be fired if they are not doing their job.
    
    How many senior managers have been TSFO'd in the past 1-2 years?  I
    don't know of any.  

    Well, just one name comes to my mind...KO?!!!!
    
    8^)
    
    -sandy
    

    it started a couple years ago, with jack shields.......
    
    no one seems to remember people like zereski started with the company,
    this company DID grow......right now it is  not doing too good, but it
    hasn't folded, like some other companies......
    
    it's not ALL grim..... he may not be all that bad.......what has
    everyone else got to brag about? anything?
    
    it does look like a demotion..... announcements for promotions read
    like: "we are pleased to announce the promotion of --- to ----"

It's rather odd. I was just noticing that over the past several years I've
read so much in here about how much of a leader "Z" has been. How everyone
has applauded his communiqu�s. How he provided the field with a vision.

In this string, it sounds like everyone'd just as soon see him swingin'
from a tree.

No skin off my nose one way or the other, as I don't belong to one of his
orgs. But interesting, nonetheless.

-Jack

    RE: .13
    
    How about layoffs for engineers affecting the morale of other
    engineers?
    
    Marc H.

>>It's rather odd. I was just noticing that over the past several years I've
>>read so much in here about how much of a leader "Z" has been. How everyone
>>has applauded his communiqu�s. How he provided the field with a vision.

I wouldn't say Z has ever been considered a "visionary" when it comes to
leading the sales organization.  Perhaps he was more effective when he ran
Services.

    There are two proverbs to remember:
    
    	If you're a "grunt", 
    
    		Don't be in the wrong place at the wrong time!
    
    	If you're a "senior manager",
    
    		You were just a square peg in a round hole!
    
�j� 
    

>    How about layoffs for engineers affecting the morale of other
>    engineers?

	Noticed that did you? :-)

			Alfred

    RE: .23
    
    Yup....
    
    Marc

    Re:  .15
    
    <Set/mode=flame_on>
    
    Was WONDERING when someone would say that!  Thanks, you saved me from
    having to write that!  DOES seem awful conspicious, doesn't it, at
    least to those of us (left!) in the trenches, that when it comes to
    TFSO, what you do doesn't matter, it's who you are, and at what level
    of the heirarchy.  I wonder how many of my neighbours, who were once
    DECies, who are losing their homes and having to relocate to find jobs,
    wouldn't have welcomed some vague "special assignment" for a cushy 6
    figures.  At least at Z's level, they are careful to word things so as
    to ease his transition, the foot soldiers who are TFSO'd are lucky to
    get one week to adjust to the traumatic turn of events, before they are
    out on the streets, and THAT is only after some REAL TFSO disasters
    raised alot of negative publicity!  What REALLY torques me is that so
    many of these muckety-mucks were responsible for the poor business
    decisions that have plunged this company into the morass it currently
    resides in, but do THEY get unceremoniously TFSO'd?  Nope, not a
    chance!  They get "special assignments", announced with flowery words,
    and retain their salaries and perks.
    
    <Set/mode=flame_off>
    
    Well, no sense in getting my gizzards into an uproar, can't change
    things anyway.  Gotta reserve my energies for hanging in, and doing the
    best I can, no matter how insane things around me tend to get.
    
    Mutter...grumble...
    
    /m
    

    Zereski, Hughes, Grainger, Giordano, Shue, (I can't go back any
    further).
    
    VP, US Sales hasn't exactly been one of the steps to stardom, has it?
    
    Chet

    re: .26
    
    >VP, US Sales hasn't exactly been one of the steps to stardom, has it?
    
    Nor, according to many analysts and/or the balance sheet, can their
    performance be characterized as "stellar." Like it or not, sales is
    strictly a numbers game: live by 'em and die by 'em.

    one note a few back asked why so hard on Z? i don't think the "TFSO the
    bum" crowd is necessarily picking on Z. It's a matter of fairness. We
    are TFSOing a lot of very good people in Sales and Sales Support in the 
    field. People we could really use and were doing a good job but just
    got caught in the numbers games. Z was removed because he was not
    performing in his position (MHO). you do that poorly as a grunt in the
    field and you're gone baby. history. the same rules should apply to
    senior management. they don't. and i don't think that fair.
    
    gene.

    Rose Ann Giordano, although once the VP of the Eastern States, was
    never the US Sales VP.  Hughes, and Shue (not sure about Grainger) never 
    had Zareski's job; they reported to him.

    Hughes was a decent man who ran head on into the inertia of the
    ponderous Digital bureaucracy. He introduced more change than the
    organization could absorb and underestimated it's hostility to change.
    He apparently could not come to terms with KO and left before he met
    his likely demise here.
    
    Both the Sales and Service organizations have long suffered from the
    fact that Digital had only one general manager for most of it's history
    (this, I believe, has done more than any other single factor to
    accelerate our downfall).  The Service organizations have always focused
    more on the expense side of the business, thus making them fairly
    effective at squeezing the installed base (when it had no where else to
    go) while rather unimaginative at inventing new lines of business.  The
    Sales organization, on the other hand, was focused on the revenue side
    of the equation.  It was never asked to manage itself like a P/L business,
    and people seems genuinely suprised that it allowed the expense side of
    it's ledger to grow disproportionately.  And before you bash all the
    sales reps, find out how much of the Sales, General and Administrative
    expense comes from the line sales force;  you'll be suprised at how big
    the overhead is.
    
    For some reason KO always had a soft spot for the expense managers and
    always gave the overall Field management position to Service managers. 
    They have always shown a gross ignorance of how Sales works and
    contributed to the once (and still, to some extent) widely held belief
    that if revenues are down, it must be a sales force problem, never a
    product or pricing problem.  Service does not know how to sell any more
    than Sales knows how to deliver.
    
    Maybe BP will truly bring some needed change.  A proliferation of truly
    accountable GM's might bring this company back to it's entreprenuerial
    roots.  What we've had for the decade of my tenure here has been an
    awful lot like the now defunct Soviet Communist Party.
    
    Al
    

    Ya.... the only Senior type to get canned was KO.... go figure.??
    

    
    re:  .29 
    
    That's the best characterization of the problem I've seen!!

           re: .2 
    
>   Care to guess who the permanent(?) replacement will be?
    
           No takers, huh?  How 'bout R.P.?
           
           -Steve
           
           PS- No comments, Chris! ;-)
           

           

    Gee, with the Z man gone, who's gonna offer me those fantastic $200
    bonuses?  That wonderful offer sure motivated me last year, and I was
    SO disappointed in myself when we "just missed" getting the bonus.  I
    guess I just should have worked a little harder.  

    
    
    Between that bonus fiasco and hearing him complain and blame "grunts" for
    doing what HIS system of metrics rewarded, I'm surprised nobody lost
    their cool with him publicly.
    
    BTW. Z often had nasty things to say about the more vocal noters in this
    conference.  I wonder If he's listening now?
    
    -Ed
      

	re .34:

>    Between that bonus fiasco and hearing him complain and blame "grunts" for
>    doing what HIS system of metrics rewarded, I'm surprised nobody lost
>    their cool with him publicly.

	Funny, I remember hearing one of the top DS people in my country
	mention how his boss was disappointed at how people were "rigidly
	sticking to their metrics" and not exercising initiative and
	"doing the right thing".

	The result was that some fairly obvious mistakes were being made,
	resulting in losses of revenue.

	Laugh? Cry? Throw up?

	/Tom