When my friend John Godfrey called and asked me to come to Pittsburgh and become executive vice president of On-Line Systems, one of the most important questions I had to ask myself was whether I should focus on people or strategy. And after a lot of thought I decided it was almost a tie, because the right strategy without the right people is dead. And you can have the right people going down the wrong path and that also will kill you.

The key people question was whether to bring in my own team or work with the original founding team. The company was about a year old and had 30 or so employees, 12 of whom had started the company with John. The last person in the position I was taking couldn't get along with anybody and had to be fired. But in the meantime the company had lost some of its best customers and employees.

In Washington, I had established a strong contact network and had the pick of the team I had assembled for Heliodyne, my first start-up. But after considerable soul-searching, I decided to work with On-Line Systems' founding team. I knew it would be harder, but I also felt it was the right thing to do. These people had thrown the dice with John and deserved a chance to make On-Line a winner. And bringing in my own team would have telegraphed weakness. Of course, working with the existing On-Line team after their negative experience with my predecessor came with problems of its own.

So this column is about some of the things I did as the new kid on the block to repair the personnel damage, realign the company's strategy, restore morale, and get the existing team on my side.

I'm not saying that working with the existing team is always the best call or that the tactics I used are the only ones that can restore morale and cope with the challenges I faced. But it's what I did and it worked. Take from it what you find useful.

As I expected, it was a very difficult first six months. You can almost imagine the scene. Suppose you are the executive VP of sales and you and I disagree on what accounts are most important, where to look for prospects, how to price our service, how to present ourselves, how to position the company -- any number of things. I'm coming in with a fresh view and you're talking history.

Godfrey came in on weekends and many evenings. So what would happen was the guy or the guys would come in, too, and wander into John's office and start talking about the good old days when On-Line Systems was first started and how they had faced tough times together. And John would get in a nostalgic frame of mind and think of those days, and then the manager would suggest a way of doing something, and John would have no reason to challenge him so he would passively agree, "Yeah, sure, that sounds good."

Now Monday morning I come in and the next thing I know is this manager would come in and say, "You know, Jack, I think we ought to keep doing things this way, and I talked to John Godfrey and he agrees with me that we ought to keep doing it this way and not change it."

It's a natural reaction because here is a group of a dozen or so people who started the company, worked day and night to get this thing going, and now we have a new person coming in and wanting to change direction. And what the hell does that person know? But it created an impossible situation for me. I came in reporting to the chairman and now I report to this guy.

So immediately I had to face the challenge of the original employees going around me to John whenever they disagreed with something I wanted to implement. It wasn't as easy as saying it once. Many times in those first six months I went to John and raised holy hell. "Talk to these guys about all the history you want, that's up to you. But don't brainstorm with them on what we ought to do because that just gives them fodder for when they come back to me about why my ideas should not even be tried."

Eventually it got through to John and the team that when it came to operations, I was the final word. And that was an important breakthrough.

A morale booster I more or less fell into as I set about to meet more people and learn the company was to walk around and talk to the employees. And I would ask, "If there is one thing" -- and I was careful to limit it to one thing -- "you would change in this company, what would it be?" And I would either explain that we couldn't do it because of reasons they had no way of knowing; that they could consider it done; or that I would look into it and get back to them. And I always made sure I got back to them. That turned into a hell of a morale booster.

I also looked over the roster of people we had lost because they couldn't get along with my predecessor. One guy was a hotshot salesman, and friction with John and my predecessor had led to his departure. So I reached out to him; we had several meetings and he finally came back.

I did the same thing with customers. I looked over the customers we had lost and reached out to the ones we wanted, and explained that this was a whole new On-Line Systems. That helped us boost sales.

This was the 1970s and we were a time-sharing company. We charged people to dial into our mainframe and do calculations. For instance, one of our software packages was written by Godfrey, and it made it simple for steel companies to maintain the exact alloy mixture for specific jobs. But they had to be able to reach our computers and in those days access was through pretty fragile telephone cables. If people couldn't dial in, they couldn't get to our computers; but of course they blamed us. And the problems back then were sometimes far from obvious. So we formed our own crack telephone cable maintenance team, and in time the telephone company came to trust them in diagnosing problems on the line.

One time there was a line that was tied crossing over a bridge here in Pittsburgh. Every time a big truck went over that bridge, it would shake and the connection would shake as well, creating noise on the line

Well, if you're a steel company using our service, you don't care whether it's the software, phone company or computers; you just want in so you can get your output. One time the computers failed, and this steelworker called up and said, "If you don't give me access to this computer now, you're going to get 10 tons of steel dumped right in front of your house." That's what I mean by demanding customers.

So quality and service were a high priority and an important aspect of my strategy. For instance, to ensure quality on the night shift, I told employees that I wanted the telephone answered in two or three rings. More than that, and I would assume the place was on fire and get dressed and come down. And I did.

Eventually, we worked out very well and became a very tightly bonded team. I would say it took six to nine months before this group of guys and myself worked extremely well together. And I could have shaved that time by bringing in my own team and hitting the beaches running. But in retrospect, working with the existing team was the right thing to do for me. But it's a call each person has to make for himself or herself.

One warning: Never assume that the authority of your position will get people to do things your way. They must become willing to try your ideas because they trust and respect you. That's the only motivation that will keep morale high and efficiency optimum. Our internal motto was, "Let truth win over."