Notes for John’s Talk

retirement dinner

May 22, 1997

Good Evening

Welcome

Appreciation

Introductions

My wife Lynda, President and everything else for Computer Training Services

My daughter Beth, formerly on staff at Gettysburg College, newly the assistant Dean of students at Holy Cross

All of you have asked what I am going to do

The answer I give varies with the time of day, person, etc

Rebalance my life

Work on my physical fitness

Surf the internet

Tonight I will tell you what I am really going to do

Relax

Write my book

Haven’t you heard about my book?

I call it a fantasy book

It’s real enough to me

There are no copies laying around

Its certainly not a Xerox Document

Its chapters are well in mind

They have names

They have content I have described on occasions

My plan tonight

Not to take orders--yet

This is not a threat, but then if the shoe fits...

But I will make a serious point

Title

Title of the book

Managing your boss and other obstacles to success and happiness in Xerox

Managing your boss

Its a HOW TO DO IT it book

Its pointing to the responsibilities of the employee

It may not give Scott Adams a run for his money, but its in that direction

Subtitle: and other obstacles....

Chapter--

The art of asking stupid questions

You’re in a meeting

The speaker starts talking about KVW cards

You haven’t the foggiest notion what a KVW card is.

You don’t want to look dumb

What do you do?

Phrased properly, you ask just the right question

The rest of the people assume you know the answer but you want them to hear it from the speaker.

Most are delighted you asked because they really didn’t know

Sometimes you find out that the speaker doesn’t know either

Other Chapters

Blame Grabbing as a means to the top

Law of conservation of weasel words

Making Murphy’s Law work for you

Should I cover another chapter?

If I had more time..

I will

but you don’t

I want to be brief

I don’t want to give away too much

I need to leave some room for blackmail

I promised you a serious point

Where did I learn all this?

From whom, is more the the point

Let mention some of the people who’ve worked for me:

Familiar Names

Bill Sullivan

Joe Marino

Gil Hatch

Maurice Holmes

Jeff Sisson

Ronna Treier

Ken Blanchard

Jim Riley

Impressive Names

VP and Chief Engineer at Xerox (Maurice Holmes)

Professor of Engineering Innovation at MIT (Don Clausing)

Head of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State (Dick Benson)

Professor of non-linear mechanics at Northwestern University (Troy Shinbrot)

VP of Marketing at Unigraphics (Tony Affuso)

Director of Advanced Development at Pitney Bowes (Dennis Stemmle)

The CEO of Moscom (Al Montevecchio)

The VP of Operations for Logical Operations (Deborah Denome)

The author of eight papers on mathematics of sports (T.C.Soong)

Historic Characters

The person who demonstrated contact electrography using puddle development to Joe Wilson in 1965.

The person who lead the move from P & S part numbers to the E & K system. (Bruce Fyfe)

The person who first brought AHP into Xerox (Bill Rodgers)

The person who hid a Canon 8mm movie camera inside a 914 for the CIA, which 914 wound up in the Russian Embassy!!!! (Ray Zoppoth)

Historic Teams

The team who built the first Print Engine Controller attached to an IBM mainframe to produce graphics. (1965)

The team who built the first clustered print engine controller attached to an IBM mainframe to control eight (count-em xerographic digital printers producing graphics) (1965)

The team who evaluated the CAD vendors and recommended Intergraph.

The facilitator of the team who evaluated CAD vendors and recommended SDRC.

The corporate team who recommended that Xerox adopt Sun as the common workstation.

The team who developed the process guidelines for Software Configuration Management.

The team (of two) who went to Washington in 1968 and pitched a Xerographic Color Map printer to the US Navy

This is a lot of talent!

If I had bought stock in these people!!

Wait, come to think of it, I did.

Or at least the company did, for me.

That’s how I can afford to retire!

With the exception of the managers in this room :-)

Managers have deserved the Employee Assessment scores they got

But I have worked for the best subordinates in the world

by the way SUBORDINATES is a terribly loaded word, I prefer MANAGEE’s

The strength of Xerox is in its subordinates/managees

Thanks for everything-its been a fun few decades.

Thanks to Dan for taking me in after my expatriate assignment to IM

Thanks to Steve for making it interesting

Thanks to Tom for holding me afloat while I relearned the business

Thanks to Ronna for making this last year a pleasant one

Thanks to Dick, Joe, and Tom for proving my point about managee’s