Be first and be lonely.
One of the most important things for any leader is to never let anyone else define who you are. And you define who you are. I never think of myself as being a woman CEO of this company. I think of myself as a steward of a great institution.
Someone once told me growth and comfort do not coexist. And I think it’s a really good thing to remember.
To me, I learned along the way, you know, culture is behavior. That’s all it is; culture is people’s behaviors.
For CEOs today, it’s all about acheieving growth and efficiency through innovation. It’s not about product innovation so much anymore as about innovating business models. process, culture and management.
The most important thing for any of us to be in our jobs is curious.
Don’t let others define you. Define yourself.
IBM’s long-standing mantra is ‘Think.’ What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues.
Never love something so much that you can’t let go of it.
Clients say, ‘What’s your strategy,’ and I say, ‘Ask me what I believe first.’ That’s a far more enduring answer.
I always say, you know, if I sit here and close my eyes and say, ‘When did I learn the most in my life, in my career?’ It’ll always be when I close them and everything I think of is when I took a risk. It’s when I think I learned the most.
Big data is indeed a buzzword but it is one that is frankly under-hyped.
You have to stick up for what you believe in. And that, to me, is the biggest thing you can do about driving inclusion.
If you’re clear on what you believe, you have a great foundation to go make a market.
I think ‘Actions speak louder than words’ is one thing, I think, I always took from my mom. And to this day, I think about that in everything I do.
Any city has to give some thought to its ambition and brand in order to set sustainability goals.
Big Data will spell the death of customer segmentation and force the marketer to understand each customer as an individual within eighteen months, or risk being left in the dust.
And the reason I came to IBM was I think – I always say at a really early age, I learned you’ve got to be passionate about what you do. No matter what it is, you put too much, your heart and soul in it, you have to be passionate about it. You make too many sacrifices.
I’ve been head of strategy at IBM and together with my colleagues built our five-year plan. My priorities are going to be to continue to execute on that.
Growth and comfort do not coexist. If everything is feeling comfortable, you probably need to sit down and do some goal setting.