A Nortel Perspective: O Canada!A Nortel Perspective: O Canada!
What should matter are the people--the Nortel employees and retirees on both sides of the border.
January 22, 2009
What should matter are the people--the Nortel employees and retirees on both sides of the border.
Jay Brandstadter, a friend of VoiceCon and No Jitter, sent me this perspective on Nortel:
I recently took a Caribbean cruise and there were a number of Canadians onboard, many from Toronto. It seemed that these north-of-the border shipmates all had some sort of Nortel connection-one a retired Nortel engineer who, like me, had been very involved in ISDN, another has a son who works for the company, and a third whose cousin also works for Nortel. All were concerned and, rightly so, with Nortel's financial situation and obvious chaos; we didn't know what would happen in a few days.
From 1982 to 1989 I was employed by what was then, Northern Telecom. Accordingly, my view as a one-time "insider" (albeit 20 years ago) may be somewhat different than that of the usual suspects and pundits who have already issued their "I told you so" reports of the Nortel train wreck. Additionally, I have always inexplicitly had a warm spot for Canada and things Canadian and have generally enjoyed my ventures to Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, etc., before, during and after my Nortel tenure. I don't really know why other than a modest interest in hockey. Go figure.
Nortel has been a leader in technology innovation and has traditionally spent significantly more on R&D than any Canadian company. Losing Nortel would be a severe blow to Canada's research universities and to the incubation of new high tech companies. Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper had a recent article on this. There are numerous other accounts of the Nortel situation in this paper for those desiring a very Canadian view of it.
Should we care about the denouement of Nortel, the technology icon of the Great White North? Yes, to the extent that we share the continent with our neighbor and Canada has generally been a good friend and partner of the U.S. in so many things. But let's face it, one can obtain PBXs and other stuff from alternate sources. What should matter are the people--the Nortel employees and retirees on both sides of the border.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to matter to Nortel, notorious for its employee-unfriendly ways and heavy-handed dealings. The company has always treated top executives royally but has never been known for fairness or even honesty with the rank-and-file. Perhaps this is another dimension of Nortel's "AI," that's not Artificial Intelligence (clearly present in any corporation), but rather, Arrogance and Incompetence.
Some AI examples are in order:
* For years the U.S. headquarters of Northern Telecom was in Nashville, Tennessee, an airplane trip from every major NT facility, because one of the company's key executives lived there and wanted it there.
* Technology heroes were regularly placed in marketing leadership positions and almost always failed. Often Canadian engineers from the captive Bell Canada arena were tasked with broad-based competitive U.S. marketing assignments. Northern was technology-driven, marketing as a discipline was never quite understood.
* Certainly the "creative accounting" troubles of Nortel were attributable in part to management's sheer arrogance in thinking that they could get away with it.
* Northern did indeed produce innovative telephony breakthroughs such as the DMS and SL families of switches. But the company adapted and reacted much too slowly to major changes in market and technological forces such as IP and the restructure of the carrier business.
* The AI of the above was compounded by a spate of acquisitions in recent years. Nortel tried to hang with Cisco by buying Bay and others. It didn't work and further diluted the company's resources.
One of the articles in the Globe and Mail makes the key observation that Nortel has never been Number 1 in any market segment; they have always been No 2, 3 or even 4. Especially in these times, that's a formula for difficult if not impossible survival. Don't shed too many tears for Nortel, they self-destructed and remain arrogant to this day. Canada will survive as the Nortel chapter is poised to close. Remember, Bell Canada cut the cord with them years ago; Bell was either lucky or very insightful. Empathy should be reserved for the folks who kept their heads down and worked for the good of the company, believing and not questioning what "management" told them. I know many of them and feel their pain, that's the true tragedy of Nortel.
What should matter are the people--the Nortel employees and retirees on both sides of the border.
Nortel has been a leader in technology innovation and has traditionally spent significantly more on R&D than any Canadian company. Losing Nortel would be a severe blow to Canada's research universities and to the incubation of new high tech companies. Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper had a recent article on this. There are numerous other accounts of the Nortel situation in this paper for those desiring a very Canadian view of it.
Should we care about the denouement of Nortel, the technology icon of the Great White North? Yes, to the extent that we share the continent with our neighbor and Canada has generally been a good friend and partner of the U.S. in so many things. But let's face it, one can obtain PBXs and other stuff from alternate sources. What should matter are the people--the Nortel employees and retirees on both sides of the border.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to matter to Nortel, notorious for its employee-unfriendly ways and heavy-handed dealings. The company has always treated top executives royally but has never been known for fairness or even honesty with the rank-and-file. Perhaps this is another dimension of Nortel's "AI," that's not Artificial Intelligence (clearly present in any corporation), but rather, Arrogance and Incompetence.
Some AI examples are in order:
* For years the U.S. headquarters of Northern Telecom was in Nashville, Tennessee, an airplane trip from every major NT facility, because one of the company's key executives lived there and wanted it there.
* Technology heroes were regularly placed in marketing leadership positions and almost always failed. Often Canadian engineers from the captive Bell Canada arena were tasked with broad-based competitive U.S. marketing assignments. Northern was technology-driven, marketing as a discipline was never quite understood.
* Certainly the "creative accounting" troubles of Nortel were attributable in part to management's sheer arrogance in thinking that they could get away with it.
* Northern did indeed produce innovative telephony breakthroughs such as the DMS and SL families of switches. But the company adapted and reacted much too slowly to major changes in market and technological forces such as IP and the restructure of the carrier business.
* The AI of the above was compounded by a spate of acquisitions in recent years. Nortel tried to hang with Cisco by buying Bay and others. It didn't work and further diluted the company's resources.
One of the articles in the Globe and Mail makes the key observation that Nortel has never been Number 1 in any market segment; they have always been No 2, 3 or even 4. Especially in these times, that's a formula for difficult if not impossible survival. Don't shed too many tears for Nortel, they self-destructed and remain arrogant to this day. Canada will survive as the Nortel chapter is poised to close. Remember, Bell Canada cut the cord with them years ago; Bell was either lucky or very insightful. Empathy should be reserved for the folks who kept their heads down and worked for the good of the company, believing and not questioning what "management" told them. I know many of them and feel their pain, that's the true tragedy of Nortel.
