The Boulder

2022 Reflection: I have called the Nortel Affair "Dr. Anderson, Part II," because of the similarities between the two. The Senior VP of Sales, that ordered me to make an unethical (and possibly illegal) hire, was in the role of Dr. Anderson. The Executive Team at Nortel were in the position of the Regents of the University of Michigan. But the most important players - the rank and file of the company that did what they were told and made no waves (protecting their own positions) were like the staff and middle-level managers at the U of M (especially in the professional community at the U of M). They were like the Nurse Practitioner "Hahaha, we know all about Doctor Anderson, but he's highly respected in his field," with their advice of "Yeah there was a letter going around about you. You should have just done what you were told." My only awareness of an invisible boulder, in the middle 1990s, derived from a sense of frustration, that I seem to keep get

2022 Reflection: As I look back at this particular case at Nortel, I see now that it draws a direct line back to the Anderson case. It was The Boulder writ large. Without even thinking about it, I was determined to be a reformer, to do some whistle-blowing in the face of powerful interests. I would take on the Man. The U of M had rebuffed me and others. It had even punished good people for attempting to do the right thing. But here I was, in the middle 1990s, faced with an ethical . . . or even legal . . . challenge that was probably even bigger than the Anderson case at the U of M. Not bigger in the sense of how many people were affected; but bigger in terms of how an entire system, including a lot of my trusted friends, combined to put people like me down. All I did was ask some questions. I pointed to policy, to ethics, to best practices. I asked for advice. But I got roundly abandoned, in the end, by everybody. The system, the hierarchy of Nortel Networks, circled the wagons and pr

[2022 Commentary] In this entry, I seem to be getting a sense of things being out of balance in my life, and in the world, and there was a feeling of my trajectory being in parallel to the world at large, and the corporate world in particular. I had a beef with corporate management, with standard business practices. In later years, I would begin to recognize my motivations going all the way back to the Anderson experience, and the response of a powerful institution - the University of Michigan - to the complains of hundreds of students with something critical to report. Nortel acted like all other powerful institutions. It tolerated unethical practices as long as the numbers were made, and the can could be kicked down the road, hopefully far enough that the main instigators could move on to another company, or perhaps retire altogether. I had friends during these years, both at Nortel and in the companies that followed, that would agree there was some shady stuff going on. But for the

2022 Commentary: This post, from 2020, describes a point during my third year at Nortel, when I began to move out of a state of relative "equilibrium" in my life and career. So far, I had been able to sustain a conventional attitude and position towards career and all that it means. It was the year 1990-1991, and was the 10-year mark since the Anderson experience. I was not yet aware of an invisible boulder - that would come decades later. But I did become aware of other things in my world, and the world in general, that did not add up. The Anderson situation was primarily about the tendency of powerful institutions to cover up their mistakes, unethics, and even, crimes. At Nortel, I could not unsee what happened at the fax machine that time, as I observed Don D's reaction to a fax addressed to our HR department. People were not being treated right. And nobody cared. And an unraveling of society itself was a forgone conclusion.  I wonder how many people fancy themselves t

My mission in the corporate world was not odd, or fanciful. I hit that world at just the right time. The 1990s saw a great flourishing of such concepts as Business Ethics, teamwork and leadership development, Total Quality Improvement, Emotional Intelligence and the Seven Habits. These principles had the full endorsement of Corporate America. Or so it seemed, on paper. The reality was something entirely different.  Having completed my rather frustrating and disappointing year in Texas, I was offered my second rotation in the MLDP. This would be in Nashville, Tennessee, at the US Headquarters of Northern Telecom, Inc. I would join the Management Training organization, in the group that designed, developed, and delivered sales and marketing training to all of North America.  We were responsible for a monthly seminar, lasting a week, called "Marketing Building Blocks." It was an intensive program that taught the entire product line, mixed in with some basics of Sales and Marketi

I always go for win-win. In every scenario that I will describe in this series, my aim was always to help everybody improve , and get us to a high-performance team. I believe in feedback. I believe we're all fallible. The objective is never to get someone in trouble (another reason why I waited decades to begin to write about all of this).  In July, 1988, I loaded up my car, and my parents' pickup, and with my brother and mom, drove to Plano, Texas. Monday, the 18th, was my first day as an employee at Nortel Networks, in Richardson. The DMS-250 organization was located there. They manufactured the big, complex digital switches that ran the telephony networks of the major telcos, like BellSouth, Ameritech, Pacific Bell, GTE, etc.  I had accepted a position in their Marketing Leadership Development Program (MLDP) , where for the next three years I would rotate between different units, gaining a breadth of experience throughout the corporation. MBAs from strategic universities wer

I joined Nortel Networks in July of 1988. My path into the corporate world had been long and maybe a little aimless. Having earned my MBA from Texas Christian University, in 1985, I embarked upon an unrewarding and frustrating wilderness in a handful of Southeastern Michigan small technology businesses. People kept wanting to hire me into Sales. A mentor told me, years later, that it was assumed I would be good in Sales because I looked honest.  Years later . . . in 2020, I began to see an impediment in my career path, a giant, invisible boulder that prevented positive movement on my part. It was a boulder put their, beginning with two initials traumatic experiences of abuse, followed by a third major experience in the 1990s, that amounted to severe emotional abuse and trauma. I was making counter-productive decisions and plans. I was doing things that made me more vulnerable to predators (they are more prevalent than we think), which in turns made me more vulnerable yet. With edits to