Heading into IBM, I would have bet large sums of money that these frenetic early months would be the hardest work of my professional career. I would have bet wrong. What happened through the second half of the 1990s would determine whether IBM was merely going to be one more pleasant, safe, comfortable--but fairly innocuous--participant in the information technology industry, or whether we were once again going to be a company that mattered.

In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the computer industry had changed so rapidly the company was on its way to losing $16 billion and IBM was on a watch list for extinction victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.

Then Lou Gerstner was brought in to run IBM. Almost everyone watching the rapid demise of this American icon presumed Gerstner had joined IBM to preside over its continued dissolution into a confeder-ation of autonomous business units. This strategy, well underway when he arrived, would have effectively eliminated the corporation that had invented many of the industry's most important technologies.

Foreword

Introduction

PART I-GRABBING HOLD

The Courtship

The Announcement

Drinking from a Fire Hose

Out to the Field

Operation Bear Hug

Stop the Bleeding (and Hold the Vision)

Creating the Leadership Team

Creating a Global Enterprise

Reviving the Brand

Resetting the Corporate Compensation

Philosophy

Back on the Beach

PART II-STRATEGY

A Brief History of IBM

Making the Big Bets

Services--the Key to Integration

Building the World's Already Biggest

Software Business

Opening the Company Store

Unstacking the Stack and Focusing the Portfolio

The Emergence of e-business

Reflections on Strategy

PART Ill-CULTURE

On Corporate Culture

An Inside-Out World

Leading by Principles

PART IV-LESSONS LEARNED

Focus--You Have to Know (and Love)

Your Business

Execution--Strategy Goes Only So Far

Leadership Is Personal

Elephants Can Dance

PART V-OBSERVATIONS

The Industry

The System

The Watchers

Corporations and the Community

IBM--a Farewell

APPENDICES

Appendix A--Employee Communications

Appendix B--The Future of e-business

Appendix C--Financial Overview

Index