Lou Gerstner
Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.Collection: Business
You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.Collection: Rain
Fixing culture is the most critical − and the most difficult − part of a corporate transformation… In the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.Collection: Culture
Vision is easy. It's so easy to just point to the bleachers and say I'm going to hit one over there. What's hard is saying, OK, how do I do that? What are the specific programs, what are the commitments, what are the resources, what are the processes we need in play to go implement the vision, turn it into a working model that people follow every day in the enterprise. That's hard work.Collection: Work
In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.Collection: Organization
Never confuse activity with results.Collection: Results
You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.Collection: Reality
Everything starts with the customer.Collection: Great Customer Service
I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game; it is the game.Collection: Games
I don't want to use the word reorganization. Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.Collection: Change
If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.Collection: Life
The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.Collection: Vision
Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You do not.Collection: Technology
No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.Collection: Believe
We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.Collection: Business
I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.Collection: Running
Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.Collection: Service Culture
When I arrived at IBM, there were 'Team' signs all around. I asked, 'How do people get paid?' They told me, 'We pay people based on individual performance.Collection: Team
The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.Collection: Leadership
The more successful enterprises are the more they try to replicate, duplicate, codify what makes us great. And suddenly they're inward thinking. They're thinking how can we continue to do what we've done in the past without understanding that what made them successful is to take risks, to change and to adapt and to be responsive. And so in a sense success breeds its own failure. And I think it's true of a lot of successful businesses.Collection: Success
It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.Collection: Loss
I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.Collection: People
The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.Collection: Excellence
Every now and then, a technology comes along that is so profound, so powerful, so universal, that its impact will change everything. It will transform every institution in the world. It will create winners and losers, will change the way we do business, the way we teach our children, communicate and interact as individuals.Collection: Children
IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency.Collection: Enormous
If the practices and processes inside a company don't drive the execution of values, then people don't get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them?Collection: Leadership
I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.Collection: Thinking
A lot of people saved IBM. Yes, I was the leader of that team but I could never have done it without a group of IBMers helping me.Collection: Team
Lou Gerstner knows how to do a deal, and George Bush Sr., less so.Collection: Deals
For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusionsCollection: Listening
I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov.Collection: Player
I initially wanted to be a teacher and then I was going to become an engineer and build bridges and highways but pretty soon I went into the business world. I never did get to be a teacher except in a different way.Collection: Teacher