At the same time IBM started its slide I worked for Honeywell. It was a wonderful company and in most ways I have never worked for another company that was as professional and ethical. In 1987 Honeywell was sliding downhill fast and I suspect IBM suffered from the same malady. Honeywell’s top management were all good engineers but you didn’t get into the top slot until you were advanced in your career and in age. The management took into their new roles the extreme and well deserved feeling of competence they’d earned at lower level jobs. But whatever view of the world they had when they entered their top job was frozen in amber at some point in the past. They failed to adapt to changing circumstances. In Honeywell’s case we were desperate for a means of automating the office. The secretarial pool and typing pool worked only for top managers and, yet, the rank and file were forbidden to type their own memos. So memos and letters took weeks to cycle from typing pool and back to the author and then back to typing where yet more errors were introduced. Honeywell bought a tiny division from Boroughs (sp?), which had itself been bought recently for about a billion dollars. Honeywell paid nearly as much for WANG Computers as the other company had paid for all of Boroughs. Wang’s only product was office automation on mainframes. The first Apples (The Apple II if I recall.) were being pirated out of budgets into every department in Honeywell as test equipment or repair parts as we were only allowed to buy Honeywell or IBM computers. The direction of office automation was obvious to us and we were horrified at the Wang purchase as it would be like buying a one horse surrey as your town vehicle in 1925.
Apple managers are more conscious of change but they will eventually suffer a similar fate because highly placed managers suffer from what I call Caesar Syndrome. They make a bad call and everybody knows it but nobody has the stones to correct them or point it out. I understand why as I once tactfully pointed out a huge misapprehension to my boss at another company. He reacted with anger and doubled down on what he was doing which caused exactly the fiasco I had warned about. Rather than saying thanks or promoting me he sidelined me in a pigeonhole to suffer career death. Call that a lesson learned and the reason nobody tells the emperor he has no clothes.
A congressional investigation of the surprise at Pearl Harbor determined that “if you wanted to have a stagnant career as a military officer during the fantastic expansion of forces and of career promotions during WWII, it was only necessary to have correctly predicted Pearl Harbor.” (quote approximate from memory).
At one time I had a boss like that. We were in charge of setting up infrastructure at several new sites around town, for IT departments in the early 1990s. Boss decided we would use CAT3 wiring to all cubicles, and only a couple connections for each. I protested and made the case for using CAT5 wiring, which was new at the time. Also for multiple connections for additional peripherals. Boss shouted me down and got his way. Keep in mind the floors of these buildings were bare and devoid of walls and carpets.
Once the offices were finished and personnel moved in, there were complaints everywhere of network failures at all sites. The CAT3 wiring couldn't handle the traffic. It all had to be removed and redone with CAT5 at great cost. Boss sidelined me to a minor role, and I left. He was congratulated for "fixing" the problems.