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Refreshing Memories of DEC, (Digital Equipment Corporation),

the world's second largest computer maker before its demise in 1998

by Richard Seltzer

I worked for DEC for 19 years (1979-1998), first in Corporate Employee Communications and then in the Internet Business Unit. For Communications, I was the editor/writer of DECWORLD the company newspaper, and then I was the editor/writer of MGMT MEMO for its full run of eleven years (1982-1992). For the Internet Business Group, I wrote the book "The AltaVista Search Revolution," and, as "Internet Evangelist," delivered speeches around the world to awaken audiences to the business opportunities that were opening on the Internet. 

Now, 20 years after the demise of DEC, I'm posting on the Web all of MGMT MEMO, because they may be of historical and nostalgic interest, and also for what they reveal about the evolution of DEC's unique culture and management style.  You can see all those issues starting from the links below on this page. Over the next few weeks, I will add selected articles from DECWORLD, and the complete text of the AltaVista book.

When MGMT MEMO was originally published, most DEC employees couldn't read it. Labelled "For Internal Communication Only", it was only sent to managers, with the understanding that they would communicate the messages to their employees.  Now, twenty years after the demise of the company, when there is no longer a need for confidentiality, these documents can help us to remember and relive the challenges, the triumphs, and the camaraderie of that time.

Over the course of eleven years, this publication evolved from a collection of short news items to lengthy discussions of the many reorganizations and the reasons behind them, as well as Ken's thoughts on management and corporate culture, his hopes and his advice. It served as a tool for him to deliver messges that he considered important and timely.

The articles reflect the dynamics of rapid growth in a fast changing high tech environment: the stress of the ever-urgent need to develop one new product after another and related services, for an ever-expanding range of uses; the need to come up with new ways to connect product to product and people to people, with new kinds of organization and new theories of how to motivate and manage large numbers of people.  They repeatedly attempt to redefine the company, as the employee population doubled in size. They recount the struggle to invent not just new products but also new kinds of new products and  to find ways to effectively use those same products to develop the next generation of products and to market them and to help an expanding range of customers who needed our products and services to build their businesses and to create new businesses and invent new kinds of business.

How was it possible to manage such an entity in hyper-growth mode, to accurately prophesize changing customer needs and tastes and come up with new products and services that they would need and to be prepared to manufacture products in the volumes required, and to recruit and train the people necessary for all that, and to do all of this in sync, so the money and the resources were available when and where they were needed? How could such an entity -- such a storm of creative activity -- hold together and continue to grow? How was it possible to "manage" it, to deal with one unprecedented challenge after another? How was it possible to foster a core of values, a sense of corporate culture and identity?

For decades, through enormous changes, Ken Olsen found ways to exert his influence, and perpetuate his unique style. The image of himself that he projected, as a benevolent and visionary leader, helped hold it all together. He inspired faith and loyalty. He helped tens of thousands of people believe in their own potential and in the far greater potential they had working together, doing what they knew needed to be done, in the ways that they knew were right, rather than waiting for top-down orders; all animated by a belief that conflicts could be resolved by "doing the right thing", and that a rapidly growing capitalist enterprise could operate for the good of all - investors, customers, employees, and society as a whole.

Some might wonder why DEC failed. Far more amazing is that it succeeded so well for so long. Perhaps clues to that can be gleaned from the messages generated by Ken and his ever changing core of managers over the course of a decade of hyper-growth, the words they used to provide the enterprise with a degree of self-awareness and direction and a sense of pride and mission, to give tens of thousands of people a common faith that this miracle made sense and could endure and continue to thrive for the good of all.

DEC wasn't just a legal entity, a fiction of law and finance. Rather it was a human entity, with a unique personality, sharing a common purpose and working in uncommon ways. It was a vast Camelot roundtable, where people worked together in new and creative ways, a phenomenon that will be long-remembered and should be studied for what it reveals about human potential.  DEC let the world know that large numbers of people, working together, often on their own initiative, can repeatedly achieve technological and business success. In so doing, DEC redefined what it can mean to be human.

- Richard Seltzer

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