Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Everything starts with the customer.
Never confuse activity with results.
I want to take IBM back to its roots.
IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency.
The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.
People don't do what you expect but what you inspect.
I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.
Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.
The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.
I firmly believe that IBM's size can be used to its advantage.
Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.
Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You do not.
Lou Gerstner knows how to do a deal, and George Bush Sr., less so.
We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.
The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.
You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.
I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.
For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions
I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.
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 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.
I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.
The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we're gunning for leadership.
In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.
My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn't have a lot of money.
Our military should be trained and structured around missions, not the elements of air, water, and land.
I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov.
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.
No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.
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.
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.
Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Visit USA.gov and you'll find thousands of directorates, agencies, boards, offices, and services replete with overlapping responsibilities, ancient priorities, and divided accountability.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?