“Get the people part right first,” Dolan tells his managers, “The computers will follow.”
So they did. John Dolan was managing director of Compaq, which occupied a significant slice of Scotland’s Silicon Glen in the 1990s. Thirty six years ago I interviewed him for the Scottish Business Insider series The Hot Seat about the leadership style of successful companies. His style was human. He began the day walking the factory floor, talking face to face with the rapidly growing work force.
One thing bothers John Dolan as he walks through his shiny new factory. Everyone knows who he is – they call him John as he walks by and he stops to share a joke, pass the time of day or congratulate the woman who has solved a problem at the packaging machine – but he does not always know who they are. A company founded on the almost simplistic philosophy that people make results has produced results but grown so fast that the boss has to work even harder to keep in touch with his people.
A boss who spends time over names: Scottish Business Insider 1990
Compaq, remember them? Our first desktop computer (after Ray co-founded Scottish Business Insider in 1984) was a sizeable machine with a very small screen. I possibly wrote my Insider piece on a floppy disc slotted inside a Compaq ‘luggable’ (about the size of a small suitcase). I think of that now, tapping away on my MacBook Air. More to the point, reading the FT story (The CEO Chatbot CEO era is coming) about Mark Zuckerberg training a chatbot AI version of himself to communicate with his staff, I think of the very human leadership style of John Dolan. It belongs to a different planet from Zuckerberg’s Metaverse.
But even the Meta CEO came from a different world than he now finds himself in as one ofTrump’s techbros. The young Facebook genius seemed to inspire extraordinary enthusiasm in some of the fresh-faced people round him in those early social-media days – we met a few in Berlin 2010 when we were staying with a friend, a very human professor, teaching a group of US students. I remember one girl, a Facebook intern, talking about ‘Mark’ as someone who was always there for them. She was starry eyed about her work and the future she saw mapped out in a bright open plan where there was nothing – and nowhere – to hide. But why would you need to hide anything, she wondered as we chatted round the table.
Management by walking about
Different times. With almost 79,000 Facebook employees by the end of 2025 Zuckerberg could be forgiven for not knowing them all personally – though he’s making it easier on himself by cutting the workforce by 10% this year to offset his spending on AI. The news was announced to staff in a memo, according to another FT report. A memo. So not yet the robot CEO
Either way it’s a long way from John Dolan’s early morning chats with his Scottish workforce in Erskine. He was dismayed when he realised there were 200 names on the employee list he couldn’t place (a fellow director found the boss in his office trying to match names and faces with the help of files and photos.) He had no difficulty when the payrole numbered just 450, he said, but putting names to faces of the 950 workforce was beyond him.
Remarkable that it mattered to him, maybe, but this was part of the Compaq culture (the name Compaq combined ‘compatability and quality’). it was a way of working that connected Silicon Glen and Valley. After all, in California Bill Hewlett and David Packard also began their working day on the shop floor talking face to face with the workforce. Management by walking about, they called it.
Heroes in a hard hat
It wasn’t unusual. Quite a few of the bosses I met through the Insider series were proud of their walkabout management. Some, I imagined, perhaps rather awkwardly sporting hard hats and smart suits. But there was the unforgettable example set by Clydeside’s Eric Mackie, MD of Govan Shipbuilders, proudly photographed at the boardroom table in hard hat and donkey jacket. He was on the shop floor every day at 7.30 am. “It’s not an act or anything, it’s just the way I work,” he told me, “I like to see what everyone is doing because there isn’t a job in this yard that I haven’t done, whatever they are doing I’ve been there – and back again.”
Are such stories the stuff of nostalgia? Maybe not. While Zuckerberg throws money at AI, and his shrinking workforce fear for their jobs, there is among some anyway a growing respect for interpersonal skills that Dolan and Mackie would recognise. Here’s another FT voice. Sarah O’Connor regularly invites a different way of seeing the impact of AI on our work and way of life. Recently she wrote about the value of ‘glue’ in the modern workplace, the human knowledge and experience that makes things happen efficiently. [Why ‘glue work’ can finally shine in the age of AI] While the core tech skills of software engineers can be replicated by machines, there is growing recognition that human skills are not just important they are essential for good communication. O’Connor sounds quite like Dolan when she describes how the ‘glue’ works: “Do you know the name of the person on the third floor who can sort out the fiddly problem that has slowed down your colleague for weeks?”
Rest in Peace
There’s a poignant human end to this particular story.
Hewlett Packard acquired Compaq in 2002 for £25 billion. John Dolan died in 2023. I found a heartfelt tribute to him – as luck would have it – on Facebook
“The best boss I ever had, John Dolan, passed away on Wed 22nd Feb.
An amazing individual and leader at Digital, Wang and Compaq
Many of our careers, including mine, would have been all the worse, if John had not come into our lives
Funeral is this Frid 10 March at 10am at St Paul’s church Ayr KA7 3 RF
Rest in Peace to a wonderful human being
Curious to know more, I contacted the man who posted the funeral notice. He replied politely with one comment, “He was an amazingly charismatic leader.”
And that is all we need to know.
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