Lou Gerstner Quotes

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.

The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.

In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

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

You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.

Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.

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.

It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.

We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.

Everything starts with the customer.

I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game; it is the game.

You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.

Technology has limitations on what it can accomplish. You do not.

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

The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.

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.

I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words.

I've been accepted at Cambridge University. I want to study Chinese history and archaeology. I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

We do not need Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education; we need a single Department of Skills that will promote an integrated approach to global competitiveness.

IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency.

Never confuse activity with results.

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

I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.

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.

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

I firmly believe that IBM's size can be used to its advantage.

I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.

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

I want to take IBM back to its roots.

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

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

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.

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

The networked world offers the promise that maybe the information technology industry will start to, for the first time in a decade or so, address CEO-level issues.

A lot of people saved IBM. Yes, I was the leader of that team but I could never have done it without a group of IBMers helping me.

Lou Gerstner knows how to do a deal, and George Bush Sr., less so.

Visit USA.gov and you'll find thousands of directorates, agencies, boards, offices, and services replete with overlapping responsibilities, ancient priorities, and divided accountability.

What we believe is going to be very important is the delivery of traditional software and services and hardware over the Net. That's a form of electronic marketplace.