The purpose of a sales force is to bring a company’s value proposition—its “deal”—to customers. That value proposition results in the development of a company’s “go-to-market” strategy, how it will implement that plan. Central to that activity can be a direct sales force, people who meet face-to-face with customers, a typical approach with complex and expensive equipment. For simple products, a catalog or store can suffice, and today even a simple website will do.

I get asked to talk with “executives” more and more. That’s part of why Pivotal moved me over to Europe. People make lots of claims about what executives want to hear, the conversations you can have with them as a vendor. They don’t have time. You have have to be concise. They don’t want to hear the details. They just want to advance their careers. None of those are really my style, even part of my core epistemes.

Of course, there were countercurrents. Managers wanted to control activities. That impetus for control and management of potential risks led to the rise of bureaucracy, characterized by highly defined processes. Generations of executives micromanaged people all the way down the organization while fighting the growth of paperwork and “signoffs.” Such behavior also originated with Watson Sr., who exhibited such contradictory behavior. A vast number of decisions came to him, so many that when his son Tom took over the business in the mid-1950s, one of the first things he did was reorganize IBM to move decision making out of headquarters and into the broader organization.

Few organizations have or rely on as much software the US Air Force. There’s plenty of it around and, thus, plenty to be improved. In recent years, one of the more spectacular digital transformation stories has come from the USAF’s work modernizing their Air Operations Control software. In this episode, USAF’s Bryon Kroger goes over how they’ve moved multi-year release cycles to just weeks in the Kessel Run projects. Much of the work is in the “fuzzy front” end of planning and procurement, but as Bryon says, an equally, hearty serving has to do with building up people’s skills, moral, and the overall culture.

Oracle acquired Werker - April 2017 GE Digital acquired Solano Labs - Oct 2017 Cloudbees acquired Codeship - Feb 2018 Idera acquired Travels CI - Jan 2019 Jfrog acquired Shippable - Feb 2019 From my co-worker, Nima.

Oracle acquired Werker - April 2017 GE Digital acquired Solano Labs - Oct 2017 Cloudbees acquired Codeship - Feb 2018 Idera acquired Travels CI - Jan 2019 Jfrog acquired Shippable - Feb 2019 From my co-worker, Nima.

Oracle acquired Werker - April 2017 GE Digital acquired Solano Labs - Oct 2017 Cloudbees acquired Codeship - Feb 2018 Idera acquired Travels CI - Jan 2019 Jfrog acquired Shippable - Feb 2019 From my co-worker, Nima.

Oracle acquired Werker - April 2017 GE Digital acquired Solano Labs - Oct 2017 Cloudbees acquired Codeship - Feb 2018 Idera acquired Travels CI - Jan 2019 Jfrog acquired Shippable - Feb 2019 From my co-worker, Nima.

Oracle acquired Werker - April 2017 GE Digital acquired Solano Labs - Oct 2017 Cloudbees acquired Codeship - Feb 2018 Idera acquired Travels CI - Jan 2019 Jfrog acquired Shippable - Feb 2019 From my co-worker, Nima.

Oracle acquired Werker - April 2017 GE Digital acquired Solano Labs - Oct 2017 Cloudbees acquired Codeship - Feb 2018 Idera acquired Travels CI - Jan 2019 Jfrog acquired Shippable - Feb 2019 From my co-worker, Nima.