Top Lou Gerstner Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Lou Gerstner Biography

Louis Vincent Gerstner Jr. (born March 1, 1942 in Mineola, New York) 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.

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Lou Gerstner Quotes

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.

Paid, Pay, People, Performance, Team

Vision is easy. It's so easy to just point to the bleachers and say I'm going to hit one over there. What's hard is saying, OK, how do I do that? What are the specific programs, what are the commitments, what are the resources, what are the processes we need in play to go implement the vision, turn it into a working model that people follow every day in the enterprise. That's hard work.

Bleachers, Commitment, Play, Say, Saying, Work

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.

Cynical, Deliver, Promise, Results, Vision, World

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.

Change, Corporate, Culture, Fixing, Management, Part

My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn't have a lot of money.

Children, College, Enormously, Parent, Parents

No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive.

Believe, Believes, Different, Needs, Trouble

For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions

Firsts, Hard, Listening, Month, Months, Tried

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.

Bring, Experience, Looks, Problem, Spain

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.

Business, Past, Sense, Success, Take

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.

Full, Gets, Giving, Think, Thinking, Writing

I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov.

Chess, Kasparov, Look, Looks, Player, Thinking

If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.

Believe, Billions, Ceo, Salary, Years

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?

Adhere, Company, Leadership, People, Practice

People don't do what you expect but what you inspect.

Expect, Inspect, People

Our military should be trained and structured around missions, not the elements of air, water, and land.

Air, Elements, Land, Military, Water

IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency.

Enormous, Ibm, Needed, Sense, Urgency

The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.

Active, Governance, Involvement, Owners, Real

I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.

Believed, Business, Enterprise, Run, Running, Successful

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.

Buy, Easy, Life, Motivational, Success

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like. . . I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

Among, Business, Game, Games, Makeup, Success

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