Thomas J. Watson Jr. was the Lee Iacocca of his day. And with good reason. In 1956 when he took over as chief executive of IBM from his father, the company's sales hadn't yet hit $1 billion. By the time he retired 15 years later, the company had mushroomed into a $7.5 billion juggernaut.
Watson was celebrated by Fortune as "the most successful capitalist in history." Even Sports Illustrated put his family on its cover, proclaiming them: "Skiing Family: The Tom Watsons."Watson's autobiography, "Father, Son & Co.," written in conjunction with Fortune writer Peter Petre, will disappoint those seeking a thoughtful dissection of IBM's unparalleled success. Insights on management are occasionally parceled out, but that's not what this book is about.
"Father, Son" is first and foremost a celebrity biography, a first-rate one that will appeal to those with little interest in the Fortune 500. Watson has compiled a riveting account of the man who grew up in the long shadows cast by his enormously successful father, yet not only surpassed those successes at IBM but capped his career by being named ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Watson Jr.'s success surprised everyone - most notably himself. His boyhood was undistinguished except for the amount of trouble he got into, and only his father's influence enabled him to attend Brown University. (The dean of admissions at Princeton told the elder Watson that his son was "a predetermined failure.")
Watson's warts-and-all portrait of his family, particularly his father, is the most fascinating part of this book. The elder Watson was extremely tolerant of his son's youthful shenanigans, but at IBM, Watson Sr. surrounded himself with yes-men. "The higher a man rose, the less opportunity he had to use his common sense," we are told.
Watson Sr. also had no concept of how to groom his son to succeed him. Family law consultants preach that offspring should first work elsewhere to gain self-esteem before joining the family business, and Tom Watson's saga shows just how right the experts are.
Watson appeared destined to fail at IBM because he was viewed as "the old man's son" who had things handed to him that others had to work long and hard for.
The turning point in his career at IBM, ironically enough, came when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps shortly before World War II. Watson, an accomplished pilot who had been flying for years, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel on his own merit and boosted his self-confidence immeasurably. When he returned to IBM after the war, he was ready to assume the mantle of heir apparent.
"During the 10 years after World War II, Father taught me his business secrets as we worked together," he writes. "It was a stormy relationship. In public he would praise me lavishly . . . but in private Father and I had terrible fights that led us again and again to the brink of estrangement."
Despite his decadelong apprenticeship, Watson was "the most frightened man in America" when, six weeks after he became head of IBM in 1956, his father died. "Now, suddenly, I had the job - but what I didn't have was Dad there to back me up."
Given Watson Jr.'s unparalleled success at IBM, it is ironic that he seems to take the most pride in his decision to resign, in 1970, at the age of 56, following a heart attack. "I knew I was doing the right thing," he writes. "I wanted to live more than I wanted to run IBM. It was a choice my father never would have made, but I think he would have respected it."