note to dell: don’t compare yourself to apple; you guys aren’t in the same business etc.

In my last post about Dell, Len left the follo­wing comment:

Hugh, I’m curious what exactly they want you to do? Their direc­tion or lack there of baf­fles me.
Although a rein­ven­tion can be many things or have many mea­nings, set­ting the course of a com­pany the size of Dell is a tall order. A tall order that a CEO and a board of direc­tors are paid to envi­sion and carry out.
Com­pa­nies hire con­sul­tants all the time, that’s not a big deal, howe­ver it stri­kes me that if they don’t have an idea of what direc­tion they need to go in, the mana­ge­ment needs to change before anything mea­ning­ful can occur.
It would be a dif­fe­rent story if they had an idea and nee­ded exper­tise in get­ting there, but it’s com­ple­tely another when they ask someone to tell them where they need to be. The old quote from Wayne Gretzky applies here. The rea­son for his suc­cess was that he didn’t chase the puck, he ska­ted to where he thought the puck was going to be.
Clearly their pre­sent lea­dership is una­ble to do this, so unless you plan on taking up per­ma­nent resi­dency at Dell, they’ll still have trou­ble long-term. That is unless they have a clear vision and just don’t know how to get there (enter Hugh), which takes me back to my ope­ning line/question.

There’s lots of stuff to chew on here; so let’s make a list:
1. So far, the haven’t told me what they want me to do. I’ve not even been offi­cially hired by them yet, though we are tal­king. We’ll see. I’m just kinda making it up as I go along. Mic­ro­soft never hired me to create The Blue Mons­ter, either.
2. I think the “re-invention” will come from four angles:

i. Evo­lu­tion of cus­to­mer ser­vice. Sure, they have a ways to go. Then again, don’t we all etc. They’ve cer­tainly come a long way since Jeff Jar­vis and the whole “Dell Hell” epi­sode, which gives me rea­sons to be cheer­ful.
ii. Design. Ten years ago, I didn’t own a com­pu­ter. I really didn’t. The com­pany I wor­ked for gave me one– a Mac desk­top. The inter­net was still rela­ti­vely still in its infancy back then, so besi­des using Word to do my job, sen­ding emails, and sur­fing the net occa­sio­nally, I didn’t really have a lot of use for it. Now I can’t ima­gine life without my lap­top.
To use a Real Estate alle­gory: When your com­pany sets you up with a tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion in a new town, you don’t really mind too much that it’s Embassy Sui­tes. It ser­ves a func­tion. But let’s say you’re loo­king for a new house for you and your spouse and young chil­dren to move into, your needs become A LOT more exac­ting. Not to men­tion, a lot more expen­sive in terms of both square foo­tage and decor. There’s a rea­son why com­mer­cial real estate tends to be chea­per than resi­den­tial etc.
More and more peo­ple are using their own com­pu­ters to do their work. Their “Own Homes” for their data, as it were. Dell has long been been in the “Tem­po­rary Accom­mo­da­tion” busi­ness, for other people’s data. And now as the mar­ket chan­ges, they’re having to make the move from buil­ding “Embassy Sui­tes”, to buil­ding actual “Pri­vate Dwe­llings”. There’s a con­tex­tual headshift to work through. And it won’t hap­pen over­night– it’s a big com­pany.
iii. India & China. In 2007 for the first time, Dell made more money from outside the USA than from inside it. 50.2% vs 49.8%, I believe are the figu­res. The ques­tion is not about how one get more busi­ness from the West Coast, Mac-using hips­ter crowd. The big ques­tion is, how do you get tech­no­logy into the hands of peo­ple who THIS SIMPLY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN AN OPTION FOR, even a cou­ple of years ago?
iv. Cul­ture. To me this is the big­gest issue of the four. You can’t thrill your cus­to­mers until you thrill your­self first. Let’s face it, a big part of the Dell sch­tick is built around pro­ces­ses– sales, manu­fac­tu­ring, con­tro­lling costs and all that lovely, cor­po­rate back-office stuff. That’s fair enough, most big com­pa­nies ope­rate like this. I would very much like to know, what per­cen­tage of Dell emplo­yees feel “This is just a paycheck”, ver­sus how many feel, “Dam­mit, we’re fric­kin’ chan­ging the world here”…?
The fact is, one can never unde­res­ti­mate the impor­tance what the mili­tary call, “Esprit De Corps”. One can never unde­res­ti­mate the impor­tance of what my friend, Mark Earls calls, “The Purpose-Idea”. If you work for Dell [or for any other com­pany, really], I’d seriously recom­mend you go check out his “Bana­nas” book to find out more.
It’s not about “The Brand”, Peo­ple. It’s about something far more important.

3. Though re-invention may be a favo­rite word of mine, I think it might be a bit strong in Dell’s case. Though Dell has plenty to keep itself busy over the next cou­ple of years, it’s not exactly a dying com­pany. It’s not exactly a com­pany in cri­sis. But, as I’m fond of saying, it is ente­ring a new, glo­ba­li­zed, internet-enabled era. Things change. Con­texts change. Adapt or die. Sim­ple to unders­tand, far har­der to exe­cute.
4. I think it’ll be temp­ting for a lot of peo­ple to say, “Dell sucks. F*ck off, Hugh”. Wha­te­ver. Any sch­moe can have a opi­nion. What’s far more inte­res­ting [and far har­der] is figu­ring out EXACTLY WHAT you’re going to do to solve a pro­blem. The good news is; I don’t claim to have the ans­wers; I’m just a fly on the wall. But I am genui­nely curious what the ans­wers might be. Hence this blog post. We live in ama­zing times, and this all seems to me like another good oppor­tu­nity to prove it. Exactly.
[Bonus Link:] Dell’s Richard Binham­mer points to some recent Michael Dell inter­views in the mains­tream media, which I found to be very inte­res­ting rea­ding. Rock on.
[Bonus Link:] Boing­Boing desc­ri­bes Dell’s latest pro­duct offe­ring as “Small, gor­geous & cheap.” Cool.
[UPDATE:] Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie made a recent key­note: Here are his salient thoughts:

1. Cons­traints are empo­we­ring
2. Accept threats as resig­na­tions
3. Never follow; either leap­frog or stop
4. Diver­sity means sur­vi­val
5. Don’t tole­rate into­le­rance
6. Stra­tegy and archi­tec­ture are inse­pa­ra­ble
7. Short and direct earns res­pect
8. Dela­ying the ine­vi­ta­ble ine­vi­tably back­fi­res
9. A re-org will never cure what ails you
10. You needn’t be an #%@hole to get things done

[From an exce­llent post on “Belief”, by James O’Neill.]