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.

— Lou Gerstner

Lou Gerstner Quotes

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.

— Lou Gerstner

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

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

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

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.

— Lou Gerstner

Never confuse activity with results.

— Lou Gerstner

The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we’re gunning for leadership.

— Lou Gerstner

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

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

IBM needed – an enormous sense of urgency.

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

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.

— Lou Gerstner

Everything starts with the customer.

— Lou Gerstner

Service Sales Motivational

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

— Lou Gerstner

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

— Lou Gerstner

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

— Lou Gerstner

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

— Lou Gerstner

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