The Steward
Legacy, values and the long now, leadership as care and continuity.
Ginni Rometty presents as The Steward, a leader animated by inherited responsibility and long-horizon thinking. She traces her formation to her mother's resilience, then extends that inheritance into institutional purpose at IBM, describing her tenure not as personal achievement but as laying a foundation for others.
“And that is that essence that makes it so different. And then the second part, second principle is about building belief, which is, I got to hope you'll voluntarily believe in a new future or in some alternate reality. And you will use your discretionary energy versus me ordering you. Get so much more done.”
“Is that the process of consulting? Somewhat, right? So that's okay. So, fair enough. When you say the word consulting, it's a really broad spectrum Mean, I think people could be sitting here thinking it does any, it could be, I just give advice and I leave All the way to I run your systems, right?”
“We had to be able to separate those. We eventually found a way to do that so that we could take the manufacturing elsewhere and we would maintain the R&D. I think it's a great example of the question you just asked because people would have applauded. Others would have been this was horrible.”
“For some stereotype or some view that somebody's abused it in some way. You can read the newspaper. Somebody's doing something. Personal people, like I'll ask people, do you want power? And they're like, oh, no, I'd rather do good. And I think the irony is you need power to do good.”
Bloomberg Businessweek: “Ginni Rometty on the Technology Agenda for the US”
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