Lou Gerstner
Lou Gerstner
Louis Vincent Gerstner Jr.is an American businessman, best known for his tenure as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 until 2002 when he retired as CEO in March and chairman in December. He is largely credited with turning around IBM's fortunes...
running technology innovation
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.
great-customer-service customer-experience customers
Everything starts with the customer.
thinking important values
I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.
business successful past
The more successful enterprises are the more they try to replicate, duplicate, codify what makes us great. And suddenly they're inward thinking. They're thinking how can we continue to do what we've done in the past without understanding that what made them successful is to take risks, to change and to adapt and to be responsive. And so in a sense success breeds its own failure. And I think it's true of a lot of successful businesses.
paranoid loses comfortable
You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.
technology accomplish limitation
Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You do not...
perseverance moving turtles
Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.
loss technology programming
It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.
team people pay
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.
coffee two lunch
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.
rain ark building
You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
business company customers
We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.
writing thinking giving
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.
leadership powerful rewards
The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.