User:Davewhittle/AMSROUND

AMSROUND is name of an internal IBM forum created in the spring of 1991 to handle an explosion of interest and discussion in a series of e-mail and postings to various forums on the IBMPC internal conference at IBM. AMSROUND is an abbreviated reference to the Advanced Management Seminar Round Table, an event for IBM upper and middle management at which CEO John Akers offered some candid, off-the-cuff remarks. One attendee summarized the remarks from notes taken at the meeting and e-mailed his summary version of what Akers said to other employees who then e-mailed them to other employees and so on until the email was apparently stripped of its IBM CONFIDENTIAL status and posted to several internal IBM forums. Based on the surprisingly candid nature of the comments, the e-mail and postings provided a startling glimpse into the frustration and thinking of John Akers and provided fodder for numerous internal whispered conversations.

Dave Whittle, an active participant in the forums, posted two notes that were sometimes referred to as a modern IBM version of Martin Luther's 95 Theses. In Whittle's "appends," he roundly criticized Akers for publicly reprimanding his direct reports, using profanity, abandoning IBM's Basic Beliefs, selling IBM divisions such as Lexmark, and more - concluding his missive by suggesting that Akers "would be more respected if he were to resign." The reaction was explosive. The original note and Whittle's postings were soon circulating so widely that e-mail forwarding trees of hundreds of names were not uncommon. So many postings appeared on the two forums where Whittle had appended his notes that AMSROUND FORUM was created to the conference administrators to consolidate and manage the traffic. Within the first week, over a thousand employees posted public comments on AMSROUND FORUM. Within days, external publications such as the Wall Street Journal were quoting from Whittle's note. George Conrades, heir apparent to Akers, invited employees companywide to e-mail him with thoughts and comments. That year, as the controversial discussions continued within IBM, numerous articles appeared in the national press about the uproar and upheaval within IBM, including one in the Washington Post that lead with the AMSROUND story. Within a year of AMSROUND, Conrades had been sacked by Akers for his defiance of IBM managerial tradition in going straight to the employees, and Akers had resigned from IBM. For the first time in history, IBM brought in an outsider, Louis Gerstner, to lead the company. AMSROUND proved to be a pivotal event in IBM history and a harbinger of the societal change that was soon to come from open communications networks and the Internet.