You don’t get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
People don’t do what you expect but what you inspect.
The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.
In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.
It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.
You can never be comfortable with your success, you’ve got to be paranoid you’re going to lose it.
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.
Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.
I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.
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.
No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.
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?
The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.
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.
I want to take IBM back to its roots.
Lou Gerstner knows how to do a deal, and George Bush Sr., less so.
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.
I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.
The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.