Nobody Gets Fired for Buying IBM - But They Should
A classic enterprise phrase hides a deeper truth: decisions made to avoid blame quietly accumulate Human Debt. This essay revisits why “nobody gets fired for buying IBM” was never about safety - and why courage, not risk aversion, is the real competitive advantage.
Originally published in Forbes many many moons ago (2018, pre-pandemic) and needed to be re-read ever so often as "transformation" cycles have victors and losers and they all want safety so here's the revised version.
“Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” is a phrase anyone working in technology has come across. When I first heard it close to 20 years ago before having it repeated in tens of the large organizations I’ve worked with, I remember being immediately puzzled “Why didn’t they? Why were they doing so in the first place?” and how the responses of patient industry veterans seemed unsatisfactory and to this day, they still do.
According to them, it was the only safe bet - when employees in various organizations were mandated to find the best piece of software or consultancy they could for a certain project, should they have bought it from IBM, this was to shield them from repercussions if anything had gone wrong as they presumably had the strongest of reputations for not allowing that to happen.
Why isn’t this “things our grandparents used to say”
If we are to closely examine where this comes from, above the simplistic idea of “they are a mammoth who can pay for it if it all goes belly up” it’s a fascinating lesson in branding as IBM was known for only taking on a project if they firmly believed they could deliver what was expected of them, and that they would stay on to see it through, no matter the consequences and above the monetary motivation.
In other words, they were supremely dedicated to providing quality service to their clients. Leaving aside the consideration of why that should ever be anything but the norm in business in general, if we speak to IBMers that have been around “in the olden days”, they will confirm the conscientious stance was not PR but a strongly held internal belief of only engaging when they believed they could over-deliver. They -along with most everyone else in technology- would also admit that is no longer the case.
Over the past 30 years, IBM, as any other company has changed considerably and the software and services they provide are in no discernable fashion by default better than the competitors big and small, or even the opensource alternatives and as such, it’s nothing but sad that this hasn’t registered with parts of the market (it certainly has registered in places like China if you look up their history with the company) and that the phrase still reverberates today.
Job security at all costs
It would be interesting to examine who this motto truly pertains to. Is it the developer lead asked to do the comparison between IBM and another piece of software who suggested the latter who would go? Is it the head of procurement that approved it? Is it the P&L holder or really the executive who had nothing to do with the actual decision, but whose head would ultimately roll when the project proved a failure?
