James: Do you use electronic mail inside the company? (Note: remember, this was in 1995!)
Dell: Voraciously! You sort of get in a, in a rhythm, in a pattern and you find what works for each person. You have to have mechanisms to relieve some of the day-to-day issues that come up in the business. Like exercise. That can be pretty helpful. We encourage it inside the company and it certainly works for me. We have a fitness center and, generally, we have an active, athletic kind of workforce. People get out and do things and we certainly encourage that by sponsoring those kind of events and giving people every opportunity.
James: That would seem to be a way to building a sense of community in the organization.
Dell: Well, absolutely. I mean, I think people look to the company as a place where they want to build a career and a life and not as a place where you come here for a little while, then leave and go somewhere else. We definitely want to build that sense of belonging and being a part of something. And, with a company like this that’s growing rapidly, there’s every opportunity to do that, and I think you’d be really foolish not to take advantage of that kind of enthusiasm and excitement in the people that are building what we expect will be a great company.
James: Are there other things that you do to build up a sense of community?
Dell: One thing I think has worked particularly well for Dell in Austin is that our workforce is very active in volunteer and community activities. We regularly sponsor volunteer fairs, and the company through its charitable donations directs funds at those activities that employees participate in as volunteers. We poll our employees to understand what things they’re interested in and direct our funds towards those things that our employees are actually actively involved in.
James: Do you think that your original involvement from the very start in the nuts and bolts of building PCs has stood you in good stead as a manager?
Dell: This is a business where you really have to understand the products. You can’t just manage people and numbers and expect to win. The business is technically complicated enough where you would make too many wrong decisions if you weren’t really understanding the core product. When you looked at the industry, you see distinct patterns of companies that understand and the leadership really understands and uses the product — and those who don’t.
James: So maybe a tobacco company executive isn’t the best candidate to head up a computer company. How would you charactreize Dell's culture?
Dell: It’s open and not particularly formal in terms of orientation. I’d say it’s much more of a meritocracy than, perhaps, other companies. People don’t go around calling each other `Mr.'. and `Ms.'. Everybody calls each other by their first name. You can show up for work in blue jeans if you want to. There are areas of the company where you never, ever, wear a tie. There’s certainly no assigned parking spaces, or executive anythings. It’s basically an open, free-form culture where you can bump into everybody and talk, and everybody goes through the same sort of process. I get E-mail all the time from people anywhere in the company Anybody can send me a message and I always send them a message back. I walk around the company all the time and talk to anybody in the company, everybody in the company. That’s very common. I think it’s important because as the company gets larger, you can definitely lose track with what is actually going on. It is often very different from what appears to be going on.
James: That's a different way of thinking about management.
Dell: Ultimately, the job of someone like myself is to really empower the organization to do what it’s capable of doing. I mean, we’re not really supposed to do a whole lot more than that. If I have to tell people what to do, then I’ve screwed up somewhere along the way. Occasionally, we do have to do that. But, it's much better to enable people to do the things that they’re really good at doing and providing some structure and some focus.
James: Do you think it's difficult to learn this way of managing people?
Dell: This is not the kind of stuff you can dictate to people. They have to either believe that it’s a good idea or it won't work. At this point, it’s so ingrained in the culture that if you try to get on the highway and you can’t deal with it, you just get thrown right off. Or you just get sucked into it and you sort of naturally realize that, hey, this is a really good idea because it’s such a strong part of the company culture at this point. But, let’s say that somebody came into the company and they were not doing this kind of stuff... It’s quite possible that the organization would chew them up and spit them out.
Afterword: I have no idea whether Dell managed to keep his ideal up and running as his company continued to grow. My overall impression is that it's become more bureaucratic over the years, as companies tend to do. Even so, it's pretty clear to me that Dell had his "head screwed on right," at least back when he was relatively new to the business.
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