Who says Elephants can't go on diet?
I'm wrapping up Lou Gerstner's book 'Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?'. I found it an interesting, if less than encyclopaedic treatment of the IBM 'turnaround'. A few things jumped out:
I didn't know that Lotus was a hostile take-over by IBM.
I was surprised to see the emphasis Lou Gerstner placed on Lotus maintaining its autonomy. Which they certainly did - back in my short tenure at Lotus, we never thought of ourselves as IBMers, although the noose progressively tightened in a number of subtle ways even while I was there.
Lou Gerstner makes a big point of the culture changes that happened at IBM. Good lord, if the current IBM is the new IBM, I can only dread to think what it was like 10 years ago!
IBM laid off nearly 14,000 consultants in the past 3 months. Not the kind of stuff you'd want to be happening as you publish a book reflecting on IBM's successes in the past decade...
On balance, his perspectives of the challenges facing a CEO, and the often painful things you have to do to drive a company, make it worth a read, especially if you're either in business yourself, or interested in 'corporate' biographies.
{2003.08.22 00:51}
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