I was contracted to IBM, at various sites, pretty much continuously from '86 through '95. I remember "The Biscuit Man"'s appointment in '93. Coming, as it did, shortly after the extreme trauma following the company posting it's $5 billion loss in 1992, the impact of his arrival (at my grunt level) was pretty much masked by the policies that had been put in-place by his predecessors. Particularly 2 savage rounds of the Skill Rebalancing Option (SRO).

As an external, especially in the midst of such blood-letting, I was more tuned to keeping my head below the parapette and doing my best to remain employed.

I will say that from my viewpoint he did remove some of the stuffiness that had been present in my rare escursions at the senior managerial level, but beyond that, I could really say I personally noted much change.

I think that the summation of his IBM career that I read somewhere (maybe The Times), when he retired in '01, "Good Manager. Poor Entrepreneur." is probably pretty accurate.

I was working abroad from '95 on, so I pretty much lost touch with the internal view from that point.