Pete England on Max and SDS

I'm Pete England. I represent the early days, the SDS, the computer days. There's a few of us from SDS that made it here today. Unfortunately, a very few, and I'm the youngest. In fact, when I first met Max, it was at Packard Bell Computer Corporation. And I was all of 22, maybe 23. And Max was a wise old man of 36, but he was running the place, and I'm a fledgling programmer. And I can remember the first time I was in a meeting with him. I got dragged in by the marketing people who wanted to propose a special system to a particular customer, and they wanted me to talk about software-or programming. I'm not even sure we were using the software term then. So I didn't know a whole lot, but I came in, and I'm waiting to say my piece. And they start talking about what the customer wants and how we would satisfy this requirement, and everything and Max goes, "When do we get paid?"

I look up and say, "that's a business question. That's interesting." cause what he was concerned with was do we get paid when we show that it works in our site, in our laboratory, or do we have to wait until it's shipped, installed, and the customer does all his stuff, and then we get paid. That's a long time in those days. So he was focused on the business aspects.

And I found over the years that watching him manage business was a great education for me. He had a great way of empowering people and motivating them. He believed in delegating, and did not believe in trying to manage everything. And he empowered people to do things. One of the ways he did that was to chew you out when you were not doing what he expected you to do. Particularly in front of other people, which made it clear not only to you, but to them that you were supposed to be doing something you weren't doing. He was never petty, and he was never personal, but he was very effective. I can remember getting a number of those. In fact I see Jack Mitchell sitting out there. I remember watching him get one in the corridor.

Everybody who ever worked at SDS in Santa Monica has a “Max at 8 o’clock in the morning” story, because Max believed very strongly that the way the company started up in the morning set the tone for how it would do during the day. So he wanted things to start at 8 o'clock. And what he wanted in particular was that the managers and the professional staff get there on time and set an example for the clerical staff and the technicians. So anybody who comes straggling in at ten minutes after eight, or fifteen minutes after eight, was likely to get one of those stares that you don't see in the smiling pictures up here. And everybody, as I say, has a story about that.

The management working for him kept trying to come up with ways to satisfy his requirement, because he would lecture people about getting in on time. What he really wanted was for them to do it by example. They kept coming up with Draconian solutions. "We'll lock all the doors." and they'd have to go through the lobby and sign in. He never let them do that, because that's petty, and he was never petty. He did it by example.

He had a tremendous amount of integrity. And I have one little story on that one that I found very interesting. There was one period of time when I was actually working directly for Max. I'm a lowly programmer. I'm down a couple of levels most of the time, but I reported to Max when we had a contract with a French company that jointly developed the computer. And he made me the program manger, which meant, "figure out how to get this done, but don't disrupt the rest of our business."
One of those empowering situations. But I got to read the contract, and I didn't have anything to do with creating it. But I remember reading the contract and when you get down to conflict resolution or problem resolution, the final stage in that said, "the head of the French company" -the then "head"- "and Max Palevsky, wherever he may be, will decide on the final solution. I thought that was interesting. It didn't talk about the "then Head" of SDS, but it talked about Max personally. He's who they wanted to be involved in making a decision. That was their trust in his integrity.

He was a very generous person, personally, as we've all seen, but that didn't apply to how he ran the company. He was rather frugal, and frugal with expense reports, and with buying things. Everybody got that experience. I learned my basic training in the company that he ran. It was rather a big shock when I was acquired by Xerox. And they were riding high as a monopoly with more money than they knew what to do with. Everybody flew first-class. I blew my entire travel budget in two months. Nobody cared. It was a big shock for me, because it was not the way that I had learned things.

Max had a number of idiosyncrasies. I was thinking about one of them today when I was getting dressed for this. In the 60's, in spite of the pictures, at SDS in Santa Monica Max wore blue shirts. Everybody wore a tie then. Those were the days when we were all suits. We wore shirts and ties, but Max always wore a blue shirt. One day, he shows up with a white shirt on. And so naturally, when I passed him I said, "What's with the white shirt?" He says, "Well, I had to go to a funeral, and it was a formal funeral. I thought the least I could do was wear the white shirt." So in Max's honor today, I wore a white shirt for his memorial.

He had a rather unique way to use language. He came up with all kinds of interesting phrases. One of them that I particularly like is he built a house in the desert in Palm Springs. And he described it to me as a one-room getaway in the desert. I kid you not. "It's just a one-room getaway in the desert." Yep, it's got an ancient Greek column in the courtyard, modern art on the wall, the Calder sculpture out by the pool, but in fact it is basically one room. It's 30 by 60, uh...one room.

So after he built that, and I was talking to him one time, I said, "Well, you have a place in the desert now. Is it time to get one at the beach?" He says, "I hate the beach." OK. Forget about that.

A couple years later I'm having lunch with him, and he says, "I'm gonna build a place at the beach." I said "I thought you hated the beach." (Max said) "Well the problem with the beach, from the south of Long Beach, all the way up to Malibu is that it's a swamp" I said, "Well, it's not all a swamp." He (Max) says, "It's a swamp!" (Pete said...) "Well, what's your definition of swamp?" Max said..."A swamp is where you can reach out your window and touch the house next door." Max said... "Your right. It's all a swamp." He (Max) said, "So I bought four acres overlooking Paradise Cove." You know one of the things that people don't understand is that money doesn't buy happiness, but it can buy privacy.

I think that over time I kind of learned that Max was fundamentally a little shy. In spite of the way that he presented himself, he was running the company, but underneath that he was a little bit shy.

One of the things I know he did not like to do was give performance appraisals. And that was too personal. He just didn't like to do that. And I was working for him when I was running the French joint development, and I very much wanted a performance appraisal, and there wasn't any precedent for this job. I didn't know how I was doing. I wasn't getting complaints, but you know, I wanted feedback. So, I'm waiting for him to either call or come down and give me my performance appraisal.

We had what at the time was the last SDS reunion in 1998, and we put the list together, and we got the invitations out. And Max's secretary at the time called me up and said, "Could you come by and talk to Max about what he's going to say, you know, when he gets up to talk to all the people?" I said, "Sure. Anytime."

Days go by, nothing happens. I get a call, "Could you write a little note about things to say?" I said, "Sure." One of the things he told me before we got into this discussion is that he was thinking about getting a writer to write him some jokes. And I had told him, "Max, don't tell jokes." And he says, "That's what my wife said."

Well, he still hadn't figured out what he was going to say, so I wrote him a little note, and I said, "It's very simple Max. You got a friendly audience. They're all people that were at SDS. So you just stand up and say, "Thank you for coming." Tell them a little bit about why you wanted to have the party, but whatever you do, don't tell jokes.

So I'm still waiting to hear from him. I don't hear from him. I even went to the party early in case he wanted to talk. We never did. Everybody was coming in. He was greeting people. When we were going out to sit down for dinner, I see he's carrying my email. And when we got through dinner and we got up, he said, "Pete England sent me an email about what I should say when I was up here. The first thing he said is, 'Don't tell jokes' ", which of course achieved the effect that he wanted by finding some humorous way to start.

I'll miss Max. I'll miss his perspective on life. I enjoyed talking to him over the years, and sometimes it would be a couple of years before we'd get together. We didn't agree on a lot of things, politics in particular, but I did enjoy being with him. I enjoyed the way he talked about things and I enjoyed his perspective. And I will miss him.