Now that David Goulden is gone I have heard that the EMC remains will get DELLized whatever that means. Could somebody enlighten me on the meaning of that verb (DELLized) ? I am thinking that since DELL is the survivor and EMC is the devoured then according to the principle of the survival of the fittest this means all EMC engineers now will become really fit and agile which is a good thing..
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Love the explanation and that is exactly what happen to me two weeks ago, "an action" as they call it now.
What innovation? For the last time, Dell is not a market leader, we follow. @Pj9lFhB-2bph is spot on. All managing up, and bullying of the person pulling in the numbers with great effort knowing that Dell has the sh--tiest systems in the world. People managers being paid a sh--ton of money to be managed by their subordinates. And by the way, increment is sh--.
The job isnt to innovate, it's "as a machine" to deliver, week in week out. That's why everything is in weeks. Keep everyone solely focused on tomorrow report and the numbers always just out of reach so the only focus is that report. It's a fine art to get people relentlessly delivering by constantly writing a metric
So OK - Dell is an execution machine filled with empty suits of not so bright boys and girls in middle management. But instead of focusing on all that, let's ask the question: where is the innovation coming from?
Not bad or good, but along the lines of the spreadsheet comment above. To be "dellised" means the intensity of your workload increases, because A) the reporting "cadence" is a lot faster (the word cadence is used all the time here) and B) you are held accountable for what you report. C) the accuracy and micro detail of that reporting is far more granular.
So, by necessity because you want your report to look good and not face an angry manager, screaming at you because their report will now look bad, you then inflict that part of your report on the next line down or across.
Monday is call day, Tuesday spend all day recovering that call (by bullying those who gave you the numbers) . . Wednesday is the new call and recovery plan . . Thursday spend the day recovering that call for the eventual Friday reporting call. Then plan for the Monday call. This takes out large numbers of anyone non field all week . . every week, preparing calls to then report up.
Is that good? it is heavy admin and reporting rather than strategy, but that's Dell . . replicate and repeat .. cookie cut every week and leave innovation and risk to a minimum. Downside? Everything solely becomes about the number and managing up. Dont talk above your level, dont question 2 lines down your level. The occasional bully or sociopath slips into management and rises up but that's part of any company.
Dell-eted first, then Dell-ized. What a great program. Can't wait to see the rest of it.
In Bangalore at EMC CoE they will know what it means to be Dellized. Very soon their toilets will stink like the toilets in Dell facilities.
I didn't know Dell engineers are good especially the super techies. Metrics are fine but the mid to upper management are not very bright people when looking at the metrics, they need someone to tell them this is good and they choose the very owner of the department themselves instead of some matrixed closely regulated team to show that. numbers can be manipulated when pulled and presented by the group with agenda. Data manipulation + not very bright tower lead = bias via network
What it means is be prepared to have a ridiculous set of metrics imposed and a long time Dell manager put in place to create spreadsheets from them. Spreadsheets then move up the food chain and get concatenated into ever larger spreadsheets which higher levels of management distill into PowerPoint presentations that show how great their division is doing when they have their regularly scheduled face to face with the powers that be. If there isn't a Dell manager available they will hire someone with an MBA or higher degree from outside that specializes in "performance management" which means they know how to make you report all kinds of trivial information that they can build spreadsheets from, all of which justifies their job and also the jobs of several layers of management above them. And when the numbers on the spreadsheets don't look as good as higher ups want them to you and your coworkers will be blamed and a whole new set of metrics imposed until they do.
IOW, the floggings will continue until morale improves!