It defines the environment in which employees work. Company culture includes a variety of elements such as:. So for Gerstner, transforming IBM's culture was essential. For the author Louis Gerstner, a company's culture is not part of the game, it is the game. An organization is represented by its collective ability to create values. Many companies establish their values based on the market in which they arose.
However, when the market renews itself, such values remain the same - often outdated - which diminishes the company's ability to adapt. IBM's case is no different. The company's values met the beliefs of its founder, Thomas J. Watson :. However, after the company's near extinction, it had to change its values because the old ones no longer corresponded to the beliefs of the new IBM.
Being responsible for bringing IBM closer to its customers, Gerstner worked out eight principles that would be the cornerstones of the company's new culture:.
There are three fundamentals that characterize successful businesses and entrepreneurs , and they can be the foundation for any business, large or small:. All major companies struggle to outperform their competitors daily in the marketplace. Everyday life in the business world is made up of attitudes, not just ideas. Thus, the author states that execution is the most important part of the strategy.
It is about turning all your strategies into actions and analyzing the results. Knowing how to do it means doing the right things faster, better, and more productively than your competitors. The company has employees committed to success , true leaders and people focused on quality. The best leaders create high-performance cultures , set goals and analyze results. Many people believe that small businesses work well and large companies do not. However, this is not true. Gerstner says that a company's performance is not measured by its size.
It is not about saying that large companies predominate over small ones, or that elephants are better than ants. That is, despite the great extent, large companies can rise after a crisis without having to decentralize or close their doors.
Therefore, we need to develop and apply strategies that keep a company together, always thinking about employee well-being and customer satisfaction. He teaches you how to grow your business, seeking better numbers and results. Collins shows how to leverage your business by raising your concept from "good" to "excellent".
The authors explain how many companies do not grow due to poor execution. The work brings reflections that help to better understand the changes and their causes, besides stating that it is not necessary to be a startup to innovate.
We hope you enjoyed our summary and are able to apply the teachings of the author, Louis Gerstner, to your business. Making it a reality required the equivalent of a man-on-the-moon program. It cost nearly as much. It was changing the culture—the mindset and instincts of hundreds of thousands of people who had grown up in an undeniably successful company, but one that had for decades been immune to normal competitive and economic forces. The challenge was making that workforce live, compete, and win in the real world.
It was like taking a lion raised for all of its life in captivity and suddenly teaching it to survive in the jungle. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. All of the great companies in the world out-execute their competitors day in and day out in the marketplace, in their manufacturing plants, in their logistics, in their inventory turns—in just about everything they do.
Rarely do great companies have a proprietary position that insulates them from the constant hand-to-hand combat of competition. Today they are launched, on average, every eighteen months with excellent quality, I might add. They escape. However, as the years went by, customers changed how they dressed at work, and few of the technical buyers in corporations showed up in white and blue.
Some thought it was an action of great portent. And because IBM was so deeply inbred and ingrown, so preoccupied with its own rules and conflicts, it had lost its robustness. It had become extremely vulnerable to attack from the outside. It may be hard—very hard—to redirect or reenergize an existing enterprise. Age-old common sense: Stick to your knitting; dance with the partner who brought you.
History shows that truly great and successful companies go through constant and sometimes difficult self-renewal of the base business. Those that represent attempts to buy new positions in new marketplaces or that involve smashing together two very similar companies are fraught with risk.
But in and of themselves they are useless in terms of pointing out how the institution is going to turn an aspirational goal into a reality.
Accountability must be demanded, and when it is not met, changes must be made quickly. Managers must be asked to report on their performance and explain their successes and failures. Most important, no credit can be given for predicting rain—only for building arks. Feb 12, Tirath rated it it was amazing. Always thought this would be a bore, but it's so enriching.
And it's interesting to note that IBM had lost so much of its soul and purpose, and this guy put the ship together. No doubt that the IT boom would have aided it, but it was strongly losing out to new players when it shouldnt have been Great stuff about organisation structure, proxy taking over agility, a cultu Always thought this would be a bore, but it's so enriching.
No doubt that the IT boom would have aided it, but it was strongly losing out to new players when it shouldnt have been Great stuff about organisation structure, proxy taking over agility, a cultural rot, a leadership vacuum, about focusing on a few pieces and missing the boat on a few others. About centralisation as a powerful tool against decentralisaton. Compensation, incentives, accountability - there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed ; and its great to read how he led this turnaround.
And the title is perfect, because IBM was then and is still quite an elephant; and everybody believed that its too big to move gracefully. I have worked hands-on daily with IBM hardware, software and services for well over a decade, some of which overlapping with Lou Gerstner's period as CEO of the company, so I picked this up expecting not to learn much I hadn't already known about IBM.
I was entirely wrong. This is a really engaging and honest account of the turnaround of a company that was literally falling apart as it failed to adapt to the changing world in which it was operating. The clarity of purpose which Gerstner, as a 'n I have worked hands-on daily with IBM hardware, software and services for well over a decade, some of which overlapping with Lou Gerstner's period as CEO of the company, so I picked this up expecting not to learn much I hadn't already known about IBM.
The clarity of purpose which Gerstner, as a 'non IT person', brought to the company and it's strategic direction shines throughout. The book could be accused of being one-sided, but the performance of IBM during Gerstner's time at the helm is so remarkable that some element of victors writing the history is understandable. The insight into 'bet the company' decisions and simple management strategies applied to the giant organisation that is IBM is really fascinating.
Great read, highly recommended. Jan 10, Kevin Egan rated it really liked it. When a leader has a vision, knows how to communicate it and surround themselves with a great time to bring into life then great things happen like this case. Great practical advice for every CEO. May 22, Greg Githens rated it it was amazing. Probably the greatest corporate turnaround of all time. Has an appropriate blend of depth and breadth. I sourced much excellent material from this book in my writing of How to Think Strategically.
If I could give more than 5 stars for the book I would do too. This book and Louis Gerstner were such an inspiration. He made readers to believe that if he could lead IBM out of their worst troubles in 90s we could do really anything.
Like other big companies that had great success in the past, IBM went from a hungry-for-success-beast to a sleeping giant which had many problems on their own structure, internal and external communication process or different problems about resources and the most If I could give more than 5 stars for the book I would do too. Like other big companies that had great success in the past, IBM went from a hungry-for-success-beast to a sleeping giant which had many problems on their own structure, internal and external communication process or different problems about resources and the most important struggle that they have was all IBMers loose all the trust on themselves to be the leader of Tech industry again.
With a bit of hesitation at beginning to accept this position, Lou came in the company and worked really hard to building not just the trust again from inside and outside of the company but rebuild IBM from their own ashes from the past to become the leader again in when he decided to retire. Very impressive but simple motto that he had and tried to implement everywhere in IBM: win, execution and teamwork.
You could have million of new brilliant strategies but cant bring it into life then it is still a failure anyway. And for Lou, he as and I believe still is a believer. It is not just a job anymore but a mission. He spoke from his own heart to shareholders, employers and everyone else that care about IBM about what they could do to turn the company up-side-down and he really believed about what he said and made others believe about it too.
He may did not have a tech background before he came to the company but for managing position you should have a vision about how to manage a company successfully based on your resources and costs before of course knowing damn well about your products, clients, your competitors and the market at the time.
And he did it well for an IBM that just focused about themselves and bureaucracy then what clients want into a business that focused nearly half of their budget into customer service.
I learned a good deal from him about cutting cost. You sometimes need to cut your own left hand to save the whole body and focus on your strengths to make the company profitable first and win the battle in the customers' premises. For a Global company, having one and only one main structure for whole markets that would be key for success.
Before Lou's era, each market each continent had their own way of working in IBM and for sure no sign or minimum sign of corporation between them. Even their advertising was different in each market so everything had to be unify to create revive the IBM brand and he did it well. And thanks to that we have new period of e-business and cloud data. And it happened since s! Look at where we are now, I could not imagine the world without data and network storage or ecommerce.
I do believe the world own him a hug thank. Not so many people could do what he did for IBM and also for the world especially the post world after September 11th. As I mentioned earlier, it is not just a job, the man changed it to a mission and thanks to his candid-no-nonsense writing style I really learnt a lot of things from the book. Now, I just create a new habit to question myself before some tough decisions: if Lou is here, what would he do?
Oct 07, Peter rated it really liked it. Some random notes for myself, not an actual review: Very interesting book, will be looking to read some similar ones in the future as well. I like how he provides enough detail about the issues at IBM and the stratetic initiaves formed to tackle them. Gerstner saw that there were two main things to tackle: strategy and culture. The book progresses with a mixture of chronocial and topical approach. First G Some random notes for myself, not an actual review: Very interesting book, will be looking to read some similar ones in the future as well.
First Gersner talks about his own history, then going into IBM and after which he discusses strategy, culture, lessons learned and other observations. Gerstner saw that IBM had many good things going on, but had eventually fallen into complacence due their previous success.
Firstly he needed to cut costs to keep the company alive. He also needed to fix the company structure and how it's managed, moving away from independent geographical areas to oganizing world wide around the customer. Customer focus was the main thing the emphasized. Gersner saw that the employees and technology was at IBM's core, but that they needed to be better aligned.
It's something very many companies do nowadays, selling technology instead of solutions. IBM also decided open their proprietary ways of working, which was necessary considering where the market was heading.
With IBM's size they would be in a unique situation by offering a full range of services to customers. After fixing the near future IBM also needed to make some bets for the future, in which they succeeded well with their e-business focus. Gerstner's leadership philosophy focuses on execution. He thinks it is one, if not the most, important aspect of relationships.
He also emphazised the need of principles instead of strict rules. Naturally, Gerstner's self-examination of his tenure as CEO is bound to gloss over any missteps he made, but the results do speak for themselves, as evidenced by the company's financial performance after he took over. And, the fact that IBM continued delivering solid results well past its initial recovery can also be credited to Gerstner's cultural turnaround at the firm.
Sadly, these results have apparently been undone in the roughly 20 years since. It's fascinating to read Appendix A, wherein Gerstner is remarkably prescient about the rise of distributed cloud computing and automation, yet clear-eyed about how IBM could win.
IBM has spent the last two decades, however, completely missing the boat on this and now, in desperation, buying Red Hat. That said, one of the areas Gerstner glosses over is his lack of response to the rise of the Apples and Googles of the world even during his tenure.
I've long said that IBM continues to have a go-to-market problem, and that problem lands directly at the feet of the CEO. Magic acquisitions won't fix it; the only choice is to replace Rometty. Sure, it will continue to be a going concern for many years as it slowly shrinks into irrelevance much as the IBM under Akers was about to be broken up and the constituent parts sold to the highest bidder.
Nov 19, Prasanna rated it really liked it. I picked this book on an impulse from the Library, and just out of curiosity on what exactly went on during IBM's turnaround in the 90s. Lou provides an honest and oft candid insight into the process with nuggets of insights from his 35 years of experience. What was most curious to me was -- here was this guy with no tech experience put at helm of the biggest technology company for most of the century to turn it around.
And he does it! That's a really hard feat, and we can all learn something fr I picked this book on an impulse from the Library, and just out of curiosity on what exactly went on during IBM's turnaround in the 90s. That's a really hard feat, and we can all learn something from it. Some core insights were -- laying out vision, principles very early.
Lou's approach seems very data and incentive driven to get managers, executives to strive for common goal. Those years helped him gain the intuition to read people, understand what kind of wares investment bankers were peddling and what takes to align the culture.
At the end of the book, he's very self-reflective in that what he's laid out can also get old and etched in stone like the executive teams he restructured, the mantra of e-business that he rallied the company around.
And that if IBM were to sustain further, it ought to keep re-evaluating and changing itself. It's not a single adage, story or chapter but the whole mindset and reading the thought process that makes this book so worth it. I enjoyed reading about Mr. Gerstner was brought in to turn the company around and be a change agent. It appears he got the job done. Now 16 years later, I'm not sure where IBM is at, and frankly, you don't hear much about them.
Many of the companies he mentioned are long gone too. If you're part of large organization that's successful, you will be fa I enjoyed reading about Mr. If you're part of large organization that's successful, you will be familiar with many of the concepts in the book. Chapter 22 talks bout 8 business principles that I found helpful: 1. IBM is a tech company committed to quality, 3.
IBM is an entrepreneurial organization, 5. The Appendix was interesting too and is the author's sort of crystal ball on where tech is headed. Collins is the guru and sets the bar high in this area. Nov 27, Vivek Gupta rated it really liked it.
Yesterday, I felt like I needed a pick me up read for the weekend. It can be painful, hard and may require lot of perseverance. But have a good intent, keep your head down, ignore the politics and keep working. Here are my Yesterday, I felt like I needed a pick me up read for the weekend. This led to unconscionable delay in reaching decisions, duplicate effort They organized work, then waited to review it when it was done.
You were a worker early in your career, but once you climbed to the top, your role was to preside over a process. Well, my kind of executives dig into the details, work the problems day to day, and lead by example, not title. They take personal ownership of and responsibility for the end result. They see themselves as drivers rather than as a box high on the organization chart.
Feb 16, Mehernosh Tata rated it it was amazing. Lou Gertner has written a beautiful book about the turnaround of IBM in a simple and lucid manner. He has deftly explained the issues surrounding the downfall of IBM and how he slowly but steadily changed the strategy and culture to make it a more profitable entity.
Leading by principle not process and allow Lou Gertner has written a beautiful book about the turnaround of IBM in a simple and lucid manner. Leading by principle not process and allowing the market place to dictate their strategies are an important part of this book.
Focus on customers and operation bear hug where he expected his top executives to meet 5 customers and send him a report are interesting points. Lou has also shared what he believes are key competencies needed to lead IBM and frankly any large organisation. Execute with speed and discipline so that successful people would commit to getting things done fast and efficiently.
Team: commitment to acting as 1 IBM plain and simple. Easily 1 of the best Corporate turnaround book in the market. Jul 18, Vivek Ranjan rated it it was amazing. Gerstner, Jr. According to Louis, Good strategies start with massive amounts of quantitative analysis, hard, difficult analysis that is blended with wisdom, insight and risk taking.
Truly great companies lay out strategies that are believable and executable. Good Strategies are long on detail and short on vision. He also mentioned about culture "I came to see, in my time in 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" This is a must read for anyone who is planning a career in Business, Government and social enterprises. This book is written in a clear, concise and easy-going style that reflects his genuine and honest perspective on the nine years he spent leading IBM. Jan 17, Saju rated it liked it. Good read, interesting insights on how Louis introduced strategic moves to turn around IBM out of its downward spiral.
I like his tough minded business decisions and how he sticks to the principles that he thinks are good for the company. He mentions how he was apprehensive about joining a technology company, goes to show that it is always important to have the big picture in mind. No necessary that you have to be an expert in any particular domain. Also, a recent podcast I heard where Satya Nadel Good read, interesting insights on how Louis introduced strategic moves to turn around IBM out of its downward spiral.
Also, a recent podcast I heard where Satya Nadella was speaking, he emphasised the point that as a CEO it is his job to harmonize the various functions in a company to achieve the end goal. Definitely recommended for people who are looking to the next phase of their career, such as lead a Business Unit or company or being a people manager.
View 2 comments. Apr 01, Amyth Banerjee rated it really liked it.
0コメント