Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change Read Online Free Page B

to announce on that Friday, March 26. That set off a mad scramble to organize both internal and external messages in the midst of a firestorm of leaks and headlines.
    IBM made the announcement on Friday morning (even though the cover story of Business Week , published that morning, already stated I had taken the job). A press conference began at 9:30 A.M. at the Hilton hotel in New York City. John Akers, Jim Burke, and I spoke. Burke wanted to explain the search process that had seemed so public and disjointed for three months. He made these comments during his opening statement: “There was only a handful of people in the world who were capable of handling this job. I want you to know that Lou Gerstner was on that original list, but we then did a worldwide search of well over one hundred twenty-five names, which we processed and kept reducing…and pretty well got back to the list that we started with. We gave those people on the list code names in an attempt to keep it out of the press—a vain attempt, I might add. You might be
    20 / LOUIS V. GERSTNER, JR.
    interested that Lou Gerstner was the first person I talked to on that list and consequently had the code name ‘Able.’ I knew all the other candidates—and I knew them all well. There isn’t another candidate that could do this job any better than Lou Gerstner will. We made one specific offer for this job and only one, and that was to Louis Gerstner. While many people felt that technology was the key to this, there’s a list of the specifications that we as a committee put together from the beginning. The fact is, there are fifteen things on the list and only one statement of the fifteen: ‘Information and high-technology industry experience [are] highly desirable, but not opposed to considering extraordinary business leaders.’ All of the others list qualities which are inherent in Lou Gerstner.”
    I knew my life was changing forever when I walked to the podium and three dozen photographers surged forward, and I had to conduct an entire press conference through nonstop, blinding camera flashes.
    As visible as American Express and RJR had been, this was something altogether different. I was now a public figure. This wasn’t just any company—even any very big company. IBM was an institution—a global one—and its every move was scrutinized by the outside world. I was taking on a daunting challenge, and I’d be doing it in a fishbowl.
    I am by nature a private person and, to be frank, I don’t enjoy dealing with the press. On top of that, I looked around the industry, and as far as the eye could see there were (and still are) senior executives seeking the highest personal profile they could manage. I felt then, and I feel today, that while that kind of relentless publicity seeking generates a lot of coverage, and may even help the company in the short run, in the long run it damages corporate reputation and customer trust.
    So I faced the cameras and lights that morning with mixed emo-tions. I was as full of adrenaline as I had ever been in my life. At the same time, I knew this was the big show and there was no escaping it.
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    My own remarks were brief. I was just trying to get through the ordeal without dealing with a lot of specific questions about why I felt I was qualified for the job and what I was going to do to fix IBM.
    But those were exactly the questions I got in a lengthy Q&A following the formal remarks. Needless to say, I provided little nourishment for the reporters. I simply had no idea what I would find when I actually arrived at IBM.
    Meeting the IBM Team
    After the press conference came a series of internal IBM meetings.
    As I look back at my schedule, I see that the first meeting the IBM
    human resources people had set up was a telephone conference call with the general managers of all the country operations around the world, underscoring that the power base of the company was the country