Lou Gerstner Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.

In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

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.

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.

People don't do what you expect but what you inspect.

You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.

Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore 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.

It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.

We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.

Everything starts with the customer.

I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game; it is the game.

I think that my leadership style is to get people to fear staying in place, to fear not changing.

You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.

The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees.

Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You do not.

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.

This really is a merger of equals. I wouldn't have come back to work for anything less than this fantastic opportunity. This lets me combine my two great loves - technology and biscuits.

No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.

The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.

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?

I've been accepted at Cambridge University. I want to study Chinese history and archaeology. I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

We do not need Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education; we need a single Department of Skills that will promote an integrated approach to global competitiveness.

I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.

Quite frankly, I am not very comfortable in chitchat. When I go to board meetings, I arrive two minutes before and leave when it's over. I don't stay for lunch or go early and have coffee.

The Internet is ultimately about innovation and integration, but you don't get the innovation unless you integrate Web technology into the processes by which you run your business.

Never confuse activity with results.

IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency.

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.

What I'm trying to do is deliver results, not promises; results, not vision; results, not concepts. The world is cynical about IBM's promises.

The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.

I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.

I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.

The fundamental issue is: In the world of the Internet, is there a place for a packager of services? Does the customer want to go surf the Net and go to every one of 50,000 Web sites? Or will people pay a reasonable amount for somebody to go out and preselect and package what they want? My guess is they will both coexist.

I firmly believe that IBM's size can be used to its advantage.

For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions

When a manufacturing company in Spain looks to IBM for a solution to a problem, they expect us to bring the best of IBM worldwide to it, not just the experience of IBM Spain.

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.

My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn't have a lot of money.

I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.

I want to take IBM back to its roots.

Our military should be trained and structured around missions, not the elements of air, water, and land.