Lou Gerstner Quotes

I believe the principles of structural revolution are the same,” Lou Gerstner pointed out in the middle of his positive transformation of IBM. “First, it takes personal commitment on the part of the CEO. This is not a job you can delegate. Second, it takes a willingness to confront and expel the people and the organizations that are throwing up roadblocks to the changes you consider critical.

A purge happens when powerful leaders spearhead a deep and focused effort to remove broken parts of an organization. Purges were part of the renowned turnarounds by Lou Gerstner when he led IBM from 1993 to 2002 and by Steve Jobs when he returned to lead Apple in 1997.

IBM’s marketing train wreck and Apple’s bewildering product lineup were fueled by a similar cause: decentralized businesses each had enough power to add stuff, but not enough to stop others from doing so, too. This is a twist on Hardin’s tragedy of the commons. Each business had incentives for adding yet another campaign or product, but each addition hurt IBM and Apple by confusing customers and wasting money. Although management gurus often bad-mouth leaders who exercise “command and control,” as Lou Gerstner and Steve Jobs did, sometimes that’s just what a broken organization needs.

Pushkala’s team knew that top-down approaches like those used by Lou Gerstner and Steve Jobs would backfire in this company as, unlike IBM and Apple, AstraZeneca wasn’t in crisis—although revenue and profits fell between 2011 and 2016. AstraZeneca is also a decentralized company, in which local leaders have substantial authority to accept, modify, or ignore orders from on high. So, rather than telling people what to do, Pushkala’s team took “a player-coach” approach. They implemented some key companywide efforts, but believed their success hinged on the cumulative impact of small systemwide and local changes. Most employees would join the effort because they wanted to, not because they had to. And the team believed that many of the best solutions would be tailored for tackling distinct local problems. As Pushkala put it, “Let us not solve world hunger; let us start eating the elephant in small chunks.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works” — Ed Catmull.