I spent almost seven years at EDS. In India, it later became Mphasis, an EDS company, but I still say it with pride: I’m an ex-EDSer.
Long after I left, one story from the company’s history stayed with me.
In 1978, two EDS employees, Paul and Bill, were arrested in Iran during the revolution. The bail was set at about $12.75 million, which looked less like justice and more like a ransom. The US government said there was little it could do.
Ross Perot, the founder, could have stopped there. He could have said, “We tried everything,” and nobody would have blamed him.
Instead, he called a retired army colonel named Bull Simons. Together they put together a team, mostly EDS people and not soldiers, and trained them to bring their colleagues home. In the end, a mob broke open the prison and freed the two men before the plan was needed. But the team was there, and they got everyone across the border to safety. Perot was waiting for them.
What it did to us
Nobody at EDS needed a poster that said “People are our greatest asset.” We had the story. It sat in the background of the culture, and you felt it in small ways, in how people treated each other.
These days you hear different advice everywhere: “Don’t love your company. It won’t love you back.” There’s truth in it. Layoffs come by email, sometimes overnight, and a company will always make decisions for its own survival.
But I never quite managed to believe that was the whole picture. Companies don’t stand up for you. People do.
People sometimes ask me why I tend to put people first.
I don’t know if I always have the right answer, but I’ve long believed that when you take care of people, they usually take care of the work.
I think that belief started at EDS.
Looking back
Looking back, I probably spent too much time thinking about companies and too little time thinking about the people I was working with.
Most of the opportunities that shaped my career didn’t come from a company policy. They came from a leader who trusted me before I fully trusted myself.
Over the years I’ve noticed something else. Sometimes we expect people to understand what we need without ever telling them. We think about new roles, new challenges, bigger responsibilities. We talk about them everywhere except at work.
Then one day a resignation email lands, and everyone acts surprised.
What always struck me about Perot’s response was that once he knew, he acted. A leader can only move for something they’ve heard about.
Why it stayed
The reason the EDS story stayed with me all these years isn’t the rescue itself.
It’s what it represented.
A leader who refused to leave his people behind.
Most of us will never face anything that dramatic.
But in our own small ways, we get the same choice every day.
To show up for people.
Or not.
Maybe that’s why, all these years later, I still remember it.
(The best-known telling is Ken Follett’s On Wings of Eagles. It leans heavily on Perot’s side, so take the drama with a pinch of salt. The heart of it stands: the boss refused to leave his people behind.)
