An undeniable sense of pride

I recently posted a rave about IBM support so I’m well aware that this may look like I’m just on some sort of a praising roll about IBM but I want to say it anyway: I’m very proud of the standards principles we announced yesterday.

I’ve participated in the discussions we’ve had that led to this announcement and I was truly looking forward to the annoucement. It’s actually been a bit hard to keep it quiet until now. I felt so good about it I wanted to tell everybody.

It’s nice to feel proud of the company I work for. I have to say that in my now almost 9 years here I have never been made aware of anything we’ve done that I felt ashamed of. IBM has a strong culture based on principles rooted in ethics and just doing the right thing. In challenging times those principles are more often than not restated and everybody is given clear instructions not to cross the line, be it from a legal or ethical point of view, even if it means we’ll lose.

With all the things that have been reported around OOXML over the last year I’ve often wondered what it must be like to work for a company that appears to be willing to go beyond what most would find acceptable to win. I’m glad this merely is a rhetorical question for me and surely hope it will stay that way.

I think it’s important to lead by example and I hope the publication of our standards principles will encourage other corporations to take similar actions.

As it’s been stated, but sometimes missed, our goal is to encourage the standards groups we participate in to do some introspection and adjust as appropriate rather than walk away from them. I look forward to working with standards organizations around the world to help them raise to the challenge and improve when needed, for everyone’s benefit.