The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.
The networked world offers the promise that maybe the information technology industry will start to, for the first time in a decade or so, address CEO-level issues.
For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions.
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 have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.
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.
If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM’s case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn’t make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn’t make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.
Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.
Never confuse activity with results.
The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we’re gunning for leadership.
Our military should be trained and structured around missions, not the elements of air, water, and land.
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.
IBM needed – an enormous sense of urgency.
What we believe is going to be very important is the delivery of traditional software and services and hardware over the Net. That’s a form of electronic marketplace.
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.
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.
Everything starts with the customer.
My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn’t have a lot of money.
I firmly believe that IBM’s size can be used to its advantage.
I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.
I’m leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.