Bill Gates had finished his presentation to a healthy round of applause and appreciation. Ken Olsen got up from our table and started walking toward the stage to thank Gates and end the evening. But just as he started walking up the steps to the stage, Gates had a sudden change of heart. “I can take some questions,” he said.

To understand what happened next, you have to understand this: Olsen’s ethos was the antithesis of Gates’.  Olsen was a dyed-in-the-wool computer engineer: he had directed the building of the first transistorized research computer; he held engineering patents; he had two degrees from MIT. He believed that the best ideas and best technology would always win out.

Gates understood technology well, but the business of technology better. He also understood, unlike Olsen, that technology, by itself, didn’t sell anything. Except, perhaps, to engineering perfectionists like Olsen.

As Olsen stood on the stairs to the stage, Gates started taking questions.  Olsen had only to walk down a couple of stairs and about 15 feet to return to our table. But he decided to stay put, and sat down on the steps to the stage.  At Gates’ feet.

In that one picture – Olsen at the feet of Gates – Olsen visually expressed the very messages he hoped the evening would avoid: the generational transition from computer industry pioneers like Olsen to the next generation of leaders, embodied in Gates; the diminution of the mainframe/minicomputer era before the rise of the PC; the commoditization and consumerization of hardware and the explosive, margin-rich growth in software.

An awful lot of symbolism in one simple gesture. But that’s exactly what a symbol does: pack a whole set of underlying information, attitudes, values, meaning, history, norms, etc. into one simple visual representation.

It was an obvious gaffe, and I frantically gestured to Olsen to come back to our table. But his mind was somewhere else. He had no understanding of others’ perceptions; or if he did, he didn’t care; after all, for him, it’s engineering quality that sells technology, not symbols. Where was the harm?

Maybe he had a point. After all, there were only 1,000 people in the room. And not all of them would leave with the picture of Olsen at the feet of Gates burned in their memories.  They had no place else to burn the picture anyway: There was no You Tube. Or Facebook. Or Twitter.  Camera phones didn’t exist. Who would remember Ken Olsen sitting at the feet of Bill Gates?

Nobody, I hoped. And my hopes held up. For about six hours, anyway. Until the first editions of the next day’s Boston Globe came out. And there it was: page one, upper center, headline level – a disproportionately large color photo of Ken Olsen sitting at the feet of Bill Gates….

I didn’t lose my job over that picture. Quite the contrary. Olsen couldn’t have cared less about it. And DECWorld as a whole more than paid for itself in new orders. That evening was swept up in the overall success of the event.

But that picture was a lingering symbol that prefigured the future perfectly, a future that all-too-soon became a reality: the forthcoming fall of Olsen – fired by his own board of directors; and the decline and ultimate demise of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Ken Olsen, innovative computer engineer that he was, never got the power of something as ephemeral as a symbol.  And, for that matter, far too many leaders still don’t.

But I did, and all too well…

I left DEC not long afterward. There was no symbolism in it. Only reality. And as I learned that night, and have counseled leaders ever since, it’s important not to confuse the two, or to let lack of awareness turn one into the other.