Who said elephants cant dance pdf

Some features of the site may not work correctly. Prior to that, Mr. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Methods Citations. Citation Type. Embed code. Gerstner, Jr. This book is dedicated to the thousands of IBMers who never gave up on their company, their colleagues, and themselves. They are the real heroes of the reinvention of IBM. Throughout my business life I have been wary of telling others how to manage their enterprises based on my personal experiences.

I read a lot of books, but not many about business. I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk. Businesspeople outside the United States, confron- ted with the need to transform tradition-bound enterprises into tough and nimble players in a world economy, seemed particularly interested in the subject.

More recently, after I had announced my intention to retire, I was amused to read an editorial in an American newspaper, USA Today, that said, in effect, it hoped Gerstner was going to do something more useful than write a book and play golf. Nice thought, but since the announcement, I got thousands of letters and e-mails, and the most frequent sentiment was, again, that I should tell what I had learned from my tenure at IBM.

So, here I am, ready to tell you the story of the revival of IBM. Of course, this book would never have appeared without the he- roes among my IBM colleagues who helped me restore IBM to a pos- ition of leadership. In many respects this is their book as much as it is mine. There are many more. In fact, there are thousands of IBMers who answered the call, put their shoulders to the wheel, and performed magnificently as we undertook an exhausting—at times frightening, but always exhilarating—journey to restore this extraordinary company.

To all of them, I dedicate this book. Among others, it frightened a number of commercial banks that were lenders to IBM. In it, he said: "The world will look very different by the time IBM pulls itself together—assuming it can pull itself together—and IBM will never again hold sway over the computer industry. Two questions still hang over the company, its editors wrote. And can IBM earn enough from expanding market segments such as computer services, software, and consulting to offset the horrifying decline in mainframe sales, from which it has always made most of its money?

I was at my house in Florida, where I love to walk the beach, clearing and settling my mind. What prompted my change of heart was what was happening at RJR Nabisco. As I noted in the Introduction, it had become clear that KKR had given up on making its leveraged buyout work as planned. There were two reasons for this. Second, the operating returns from the tobacco business were under pressure as a result of a price war started by Philip Morris soon after the RJR Nabisco buy out.

KKR obviously was working on an exit strategy. As I walked the beach that February, I decided I should be doing the same thing. His advice was, as usual, to the point. Go for it! I suppose there was a second reason I changed my mind. I have always been drawn to a challenge. The IBM proposition was daunting and almost frightening, but it was also intriguing. I think it is fair to say that from February 15 on, I was prepared to consider taking on IBM and its problems.

Vernon got word to Jim Burke that I might be in play after all. I began to organize my questions and concerns for Burke and his committee. The dire predictions of the media and the pundits had me worried. I had learned a hard lesson at RJR Nabisco: A company facing too many challenges can run out of cash very quickly. I told Burke that I wanted to meet with Paul Rizzo. Paul had been an executive at IBM in the s.

I had met him on several occasions and admired him greatly. I told Burke during that February phone call that I wanted to go over the budget and plans for and with Rizzo. He had brought me the current financials and budgets for the company. The discussion that ensued was very sobering. More important, its cash position was getting scary.

We went over each product line. A lot of the information was difficult to evaluate. He also confirmed that the reports in the press about IBM pursuing a strategy of breaking up the company into independent operating units was true. I thanked Paul for his honesty and insight and promised to treat the material with total confidentiality. When he left the room, I was convinced that, on the basis of those documents, the odds were no better than one in five that IBM could be saved and that I should never take the.

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Released: Oct 13, ISBN: Format: Book. About the author LG. Read more. Related Books. Smith, M. The Halo Effect What Would Google Do? Related Podcast Episodes. Then we discuss the implications of IBM backing Swift on their cloud. Plus some feedback, code as speech, and more! Pierce then joined two start-ups that both went on to have successful exits where he led and implemented Marketo. He then founded Revenue Pulse, a Marketo consultancy and Knak, To find out what that means, how they plan to do it and what work they've already been doing in this space… by Cause Talk Radio: The Cause Marketing Podcast 29 min listen.

Iheanyi works at the IBM Watson Innovation Labs doing next-level work on cognitive computing systems that use data to enhance, scale, and accelerate human expertise. Pretty cool! We started off talking about tech -- what programming languages he's working with, what projects he's built, etc. From there, Iheanyi talked about some of his mentors, what motivates him, and about his own podcast Two Black Nerds.

Iheanyi brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm not just to his work, but to the tech community as a whole. Watch out now! Insights: How can public cloud drive business transformation? Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support New features of release 1. MarketFoolery: Iheanyi Ekechukwu on education, programming, and managing side projects: Today Joel catches up with Iheanyi Ekechukwu. However, when the market renews itself, such values remain the same - often outdated - which diminishes the company's ability to adapt.

IBM's case is no different. The company's values met the beliefs of its founder, Thomas J. Watson :. However, after the company's near extinction, it had to change its values because the old ones no longer corresponded to the beliefs of the new IBM. Being responsible for bringing IBM closer to its customers, Gerstner worked out eight principles that would be the cornerstones of the company's new culture:. There are three fundamentals that characterize successful businesses and entrepreneurs , and they can be the foundation for any business, large or small:.

All major companies struggle to outperform their competitors daily in the marketplace. Everyday life in the business world is made up of attitudes, not just ideas.

Thus, the author states that execution is the most important part of the strategy. It is about turning all your strategies into actions and analyzing the results. Knowing how to do it means doing the right things faster, better, and more productively than your competitors. The company has employees committed to success , true leaders and people focused on quality.

The best leaders create high-performance cultures , set goals and analyze results. Many people believe that small businesses work well and large companies do not. However, this is not true. Gerstner says that a company's performance is not measured by its size. It is not about saying that large companies predominate over small ones, or that elephants are better than ants.

That is, despite the great extent, large companies can rise after a crisis without having to decentralize or close their doors. Therefore, we need to develop and apply strategies that keep a company together, always thinking about employee well-being and customer satisfaction. He teaches you how to grow your business, seeking better numbers and results. Collins shows how to leverage your business by raising your concept from "good" to "excellent". The authors explain how many companies do not grow due to poor execution.