IBM Netezza: Success through Internal Collaboration

I was on a plane on fourteen hour flight to the International Business Awards this month and pulled out the July –August 2011 Harvard Business Review magazine I brought with me. The cover story, “Building a Collaborative Enterprise  ,”   focused on creating a business culture of trust and innovation through collaboration. It was a timely read, as it has been a year since IBM purchased Netezza and we are starting to experience the value of collaborating with our IBM counterparts.  A couple of weeks ago, I spent an afternoon at IBM’s learning center with some of the leaders of recent acquisitions of IBM: Blade Network Technologies, Cap Data, Netezza, PSS, Cognos and Sterling Commerce to name a few. The passion these leaders expressed around the benefits of collaboration at IBM on both business and professional levels was energizing. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the integration process for an acquired company can be challenging at times. The business benefits of a merger  – expanding your sales options, opening new channels and new geographies, economies of scale in service and manufacturing and an infusion of cash into the development organization – are usually clear. But in the midst of all the changes, the benefits on a personal level can be harder to quantify for a newcomer. That's why hearing from my colleagues from around the IBM universe was so empowering. My collaborative community of professional peers is suddenly much wider and deeper with IBM, and that's an enormous asset.

Collaborative communities, according to the HBS article, are  communities “that encourage people to continually apply their unique talents to group projects and to become motivated by a collective mission, not just personal gain or the intrinsic pleasures of autonomous creativity.” From the start, Netezza has placed a high value on community, collaborating closely with our customers and our partners and leveraging these relationships through events such as EnzeeUniverse and on the web with EnzeeCommunity.

It is clear that everyone involved in the Netezza/IBM acquisition understands our primary business goals. Focusing on the success of our clients is paramount. In our case, it is also to be influential in the building of the IBM appliance division, scaling it globally and returning value to the stockholders for the $1.9 billion investment IBM made in Netezza. Growing big and fast like this means significant changes are inevitable, with new management systems and processes that make practical sense but are unfamiliar to many of us. It requires a number of interdependent processes that overlap so that Finance, Engineering, Marketing, Development and Operations can work independently but also be flexible and interactive as issues arise to deal with them quickly. According to the HBS article, “interdependent processes are shaped more by people involved in the task than those at the top.” In such an environment, more than “minimal cooperation and mere compliance”  is needed. You “need everyone’s ideas on how do things better.”  You need – we need – true collaboration.

To be a successful acquisition takes passion and energy. All employees have to map their priorities: fighting for what is most important to them, while understanding the value of letting some other items go. It's up to the managers to step in and clear some of the “noise” and help folks adjust to new and changing circumstances so that the passion and energy are not depleted. Launching a startup like Netezza and growing it into a $1.9 billion acquisition was an exciting and fruitful endeavor. But having a major impact on a global company like IBM brings its own rewards. We have been able to influence many “sacred” items at IBM –  and that is what IBM wants us to do. If you buy a company for its innovation, why would you want to keep your firm the same? Exactly.