[GreenKeys] Western Union Story

[Don Robert House]

At 11:11 AM -0600 2/25/2003, Roy Norris wrote:
>Don
>
>Thanks so much for taking the time to put the Western Union story 
>together.  I had always wondered what had happened to the company. 
>What a tragedy; another classic case of a lack of management vision 
>in transistioning the company to new markets and technology. 
>Successful companies must constantly reinvent themselves.  I 
>sometimes think we take it for granted just how hard that is to do. 
>All too often, egos, pride, greed, and just plain bull headedness at 
>senior management levels makes a successful transition impossible. 
>Employees and stockholders are the big loosers when this happens. 
>It sounds similar to what is gong on at Lucent Technologies today.
>

You hit all the nails on the head Roy.  As you read through that 
story the opportunities were tremendous but the company went into 
many areas it knew nothing about.  That is OK if the company admits 
to it, and takes steps to learn, and not pretend they know 
everything.  Too many times upper management takes the path of 
"continue to do everything the way we have, after all we were (PAST 
TENSE) always successful."  I wonder what Lucent did with the TELEX 
and Easylink they bought from Western Union for $180 million in 1990. 
Probably sprayed a lot of money on it and then let it all die.  Sort 
of like watering your lawn once in May and wondering why it is dying 
in July.  Lucent has suffered from a long series of bad management. 
Doing many things just like Western Union did.  Remember the purchase 
of National Cash Register, Paradyne, and the AT&T PC.  All were 
flubs. Recently they went into the cable TV business, an industry 
that is difficult to make money in.  Any or all of these moves could 
have been good if they had been willing to learn the industries they 
were buying into.

The really sad part of Lucent Technologies is the change of Bell Labs 
from pure research to industrial research.  It will never be the 
same.  Read BELL LABS, Life in the Crown Jewel, by Narain Gehani.  It 
is so interesting and so sad at the same time.

Best regards,
Don

I appreciate the thank you.  It took me quite a while to condense all 
of that material.

Good night and may God bless,

Don
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------
Don Robert House
North American Data Communications Museum
URL: http://www.nadcomm.org
Computer Museum of America
URL: http://www.computer-museum.org