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Ginni Rometty

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142
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2023-03-02
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2023-03-02
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  1. “You know, we wanted to run the business at a certain level. I really did have some great leaders, but they didn't really believe it could do that. And I finally had to come to terms with if you don't really believe in something, you really aren't going to probably make it happen at the end of the day. And so we would change that. We would have to actually get some more help to help us on doing so. But then it turned. And I can remember the day that we started really getting the business to hum and start to, it was almost like finally. And I gave the team this little plaque, this little kind of corny paperweight thing. And I'm going to believe, I remember if it was Thomas Edison. And he said, many of life's greatest failures are people who gave up right before they were going to be successful.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “You pick them up right away. And I thought, oh boy, I mean, if I don't get this turned around, this is really a problem. And the team learned a lot of lessons. I mean, I learned people I had to move out, that I learned that when people don't believe they can do something, they probably won't do it.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Time I stepped, I ran it for, oh goodness gracious, quite a long time. I'm going to say seven or eight, nine years. And Uber $19.5 billion, it made $2.7 billion in profit. It was very consequential to IBM But the fact that it was consequential is also very, I mean, there was a time as we moved through it. I can even remember it. We just weren't meeting the goals as fast as we should. And some of it was clients were like, oh, now you're IBM. So, I mean, some things I knew would happen, but they happen so much faster. It would be things like clients would say, oh, IBM cares about a quarter. So let's negotiate every quarter on these prices. And when they were private, they didn't have these issues. Well, that had an impact on margins really fast. And so”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I was okay with that because I felt I knew enough, you know, like these things I had, and I tell you the one thing I felt I knew the best. Consultants of any worth their weight, they really do care that they deliver for an end client. And I felt I understood service to a client so well that what it meant to really provide value. So I knew we would have like something that I knew the PWC people more than anything wanted to deliver value to those clients they had next to then developing their people. That those were like the really two things and that I could. And I also knew they felt they could do better if they had more technology. And we did. So there really was a reason, you know, that I could really believe in. So I authentically believed back to that point. And I also felt I had built some of those skills to be able to do that. But I want to call it terrifying, but make no mistake. It was very hard. And it turned out to be extremely successful. By the time we ended, it was worth $19 a.m.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So, you know, unlike in my career earlier where I said I was changing jobs, I said I wasn't comfortable, et cetera. So now here, fast forward 10 years. And I'm like, okay, honestly how I felt inside. On one hand, I did what I learned, like inventory what you know how to do. You have some good strengths that could work here. The other part of me said, boy, this is really high profile. And I felt, and I can remember saying to someone, like, this is going to kill me. Catapult. Probably nothing in between.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Okay, that's a little enlightening about a business model, right? So we had the challenges of being private versus public. You have the challenge of when you acquire something like that. As I say, you acquire hearts, not parts. They could leave. I mean, you could destroy your value by them leaving. They can walk right out the door. I mean, yes, you can put, you know, lots of restraints, but still that you have there. And then we had to really build a new business model that people in clients would see as valuable and be willing to pay for. And so we had to do something that lived at that intersection and say that how this was unique is what we were doing. So you had the people aspect. And they had, or public and they had always been private their whole life. And then you had the business model. And the others, it all failed that had tried to do this. So yeah, it was a tough thing to do.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “At that time, PW had to really had to divest. And so they were in parallel going to IPO, right? So we sort of swept in at that point and said, and we'd been thinking about it a long time and started to work on that as an acquisition, so kind of balancing which way would they go, IPO or acquisition? And so the challenges are obvious, and part of it's why they went with us as an acquisition. Big difference to be a private firm than a public firm. Very big. I can remember one of the guys, he asked somebody, how long you've been with IBM? And the person answered 143 quarters.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That's what there have been five of those that had failed, the companies had bought other consulting firms. And so we were, okay, that was the great thing about, I mean, the harrowing thing about it was here, please go work on this. None of the others have ever succeeded before. And yet, on the other hand, the great promise was you could really, clients were dying at that time when we were doing that to get more value out of their technology and have it really change the way the business worked. So I think of it as how to improve business and apply technology and see it all the way through. That's what we do today still.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “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? And I think it's generally people use the word to cover everything in that space. So we sort of fit in the spot, which is we would come in and live at that intersection of business and technology. So yeah, we could give your recommendations and then we'd implement them and see them through because we had the technology to go to the implementation and see them through. And at the time back then.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “You have to value a different set of things, right? And so you've got to always stay ahead. It's about hiring people who are willing to learn. It is about, at the same time, In my view, it's what really drives you to be customer centric.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “That's absolutely right. Isn't it true? That is very true. That is actually a very important point. And that is branding, as you say, one of the most recognizable in a very highly ranked brand strength around the world. And so That's a trade off. I mean, I can't, you know, because there was a time you'd have something of IBM in your home or a cash register as an example. You'd walk into a store. Actually, they're still in places that went to Toshiba.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So they're all difficult because it's not only things, it's people, but it's back to knowing who you are is how I would sum that up as, right? And we were never great at making a lot of money at that. And you can remember Visualize IBM PC, then the IBM Clones. They weren't called IBM Clones back then as the field became highly, highly competitive. And as things commoditized, we often, as they commoditize, we would move them out. and move on to the next innovation level.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And they can sell into the enterprise. But you as a consumer can go buy a Lenovo too. So look in China, right? Look in other places. So that's what I mean by an end device. And that was a big decision because it would have been one of the last things that had our logo on it that sits in your hands, right? So when a new generation says, well, what does IBM do, right?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, very different. Yeah. I mean, you know our history, right? At one time we had the PC business and, you know, the short answer to why would we would not do that is it's a consumer facing business. We were good at the enterprise. And that consumer business, A, highly competitive, got to be low cost. All the things that are not the same muscles necessarily of being in an innovation driven technology business.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Very interesting point. It doesn't mean consumer companies can't move up into the enterprise because obviously they have, right? But I think it's very hard to take something from the enterprise and come on down Because it got to be simple, consumable. Things we talked about already.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “didn't and in fact we i mean we tried we cured a public cloud company we really tried to work it but what we found was a lot of the mission critical work it it was tuned for consumer world it wasn't tuned for the enterprise so then time has elapsing here though and you got to be upscale and we didn't have any application remember we're not application company so it wasn't like we had an office we didn't have anything that like pulled things out to the cloud and so as we looked for what our best what we really back to who you are we really know mission critical work we know where it lives today and we know how to make it live on the cloud which led us down hybrid cloud you know that belief that the real world would turn into there'll be things on traditional that'll you'll never move because it doesn't make sense there'll be private clouds for you know have all the benefit of the cloud but they just don't have you know infinite expansion and then there'll be public clouds and you're going to have to connect them”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Of that software portfolio. And they had some services with them for implementation, but it wasn't a very large part. And it's grown by leaps and bounds. Because originally the belief was everything was going to go to the public cloud. And at least many people thought that way.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yes, and so in that my last year, our services business, we broke it into two pieces. And one piece was spun off into a company called Kindrel, which is managed outsourcing, keeping things running and they're off creating their own company. What IBM then retained is really the part I built with PwCC, the big consulting arm. And so today the IBM of today in 2023 is, you know, at least ending 2022 was 30% consulting and the other 70% would be what would you consider software cloud AI? So hybrid cloud and AI is the other and some hardware obviously still the mainframe is modernized, alive and kicking and still running some of the most important things every bank you can think of practically in the world. And so that is the IBM of today versus perhaps in Red Hat is a big piece and an important part.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So we didn't always have exactly the right, you know, this wasn't a straight arrow, but stay down. You know you're right. Keep going. Okay, made a mistake. You know, there's no bad mistake as long as you learn from it, right? And keep moving. So yes, did it take longer, but we are the largest that was there”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Did a lot of work with Red Hat back in 2017. Oh, we'd always done a lot of work with them. Actually, we're one of the first investors when they were first formed. But that was 2018. We took quite a hit for even, oh, it was the largest to then software acquisition ever. But it is the foundation, right, of what is our hybrid cloud play today and doing very, very well. But I had to take a short-term hit for that, right? Short-term hit for very large $34 billion acquisition. But it was for all of us it was the right thing to do. So I think when you get really centered on, you know it's the right thing to do. You just keep going, right?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “And I just looked at him and I said, How do you feel? I said, Look, I'm doing what has to be done. And I happen to be the one there. And if you have great conviction, and I did. Great conviction, I knew it was the right thing. I knew it would be needed for IBM to live its second century. And my successor, they have picked up, gone for it. I mean, you go back, we did the acquisition of Red Hat. I mean, we had to find our way on cloud, right? We were late to it. So we had to find our way and eventually that led us to hybrid cloud”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And that's what you have to do, and that took time. And so, you know, Lex, do I wish it would have been faster? Absolutely. But the team worked so hard. And in my in that time frame, 50% of the portfolio was changed. It's a very large company. And if you would, I also divested $10 billion of businesses. So if you would look at that growth rate without divestitures and currency, which now today everyone talks about currency. Back then, we were the only international guy. Net of divestitures and currency, the growth was flat. Is flat great? No, but flat for a big transformation. I was really proud of the team for what they did. That is actually pretty miraculous to have made it through that. I have my little nephew one day and he would see on TV occasionally when there would be criticism and he'd say, you know, Auntie, does that make you mad when they talk mean?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Now, but you're big, and it's like changing what's headled saying, Can I change the wheels while the train's running or something like that, or the engines while the plane's flying?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I always felt that sense of urgency was so high. And even if I was calm on the outside, because you have. Of the world's largest pensions, so so many people depend on you. You have a huge workforce, they're depending on you, you have clients whose businesses don't run. If you don't perform, et cetera, and shareholders, of course, right? And so, but I also am really clear this was perhaps the largest reinvention IBM ever had to undertake. board that understood that. In fact, some people, some of the headlines were like, This is existential, right? I mean, nobody gives your right to exist forever. And there aren't many texts. You're the student of it. They are gone. They are all gone. And so if we didn't reinvent ourselves, we were going to be extinct. And so.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “How we don't share data, who it belongs to. Our systems never had backdoors. And she sort of stopped me. Like, you're one of the good guys. Like, stop. Now, that wasn't about me personally. She's talking about a company that's acted consistent with values for decades, right? So to me, how you work with those big kind of clients is you honor your promises. You say what you do when you do what you say and you act with values over a long period of time. And that to me, people say we're value. It is not a fluffy thing. It is not a fluffy thing. I mean, if I was starting a company now, I'd spend a lot of time on that Know why we do what we do and why some things are tolerable and something, you know, what's your fundamental beliefs are? And many people sort of zoom past that stage, right? It's okay for a while.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Very simple. Honor your promises. That happens over time. I mean, in service of, which is often why you could work with competitors, because if you are really in service of you and you need something, it takes two of us to do it, that becomes easier to do because I really, we both care. You get what you needed. And so I can remember during one of the times I was on a European trip and at the time a lot of, and this is still true about views about technology and national technology giants and global ones and the pros and the cons and countries want their own national champions. Quite obvious. I mean, if I'm France or Germany. And there was a lot of discussion about security and data and who was getting access to what. And I can remember being in one of the, I was with Chancellor Merkel, had met her many times. Very well prepared, very well prepared every time. She would know. And I started to explain all these things about how, you know.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “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. Or we'd had a financial roadmap that had been put in place that said, I'll make this amount EPS by this date. There came a time we couldn't honor it because we had to invest. And so there's a million of these decisions. I think most people that run firms, any size firm, they're just one right after another like that. And you're always making that short and long tension of what am I giving up?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And so, okay, now shareholders would say, fine, shut it down. Okay, those chips also power some of the most important systems that power the banks of today. If I just shut it down, well, what would that do? And so, okay, the answer wasn't just stop it. The answer wasn't just keep putting money into it. The answer was, and we had to kind of sit in an uncomfortable spot till we found a way. I mean, it's going to sound so basic, but you as an engineer understand it. We had to separate. It was a very integrated process of research development and manufacturing. And you'd also be perfecting things in manufacturing. And these were very high performance chips.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I think it's common sense. Like, if you're going to be 100 years old, you only get there because you actually do at some time balance all these different stakeholders in what it is that you do and short-term, long-term, all these trade-offs. And I always say people who write about it, they write about it black and white, but I have to live in a gray world. Nothing I've ever done has been in a black and white world hardly. Maybe things of values that I had to answer, but most of it is gray. And so I think back lots of different decisions. I think back, as you would well remember, you're a student of history, IBM was one of the really the originators of the semiconductor industry. And certainly of commercializing the semiconductor industry, great R&D and manufacturing, but it is a game of volume. And so when I came on, we were still manufacturing R&D and manufacturing our own chips. We were losing a lot of money. Yet here we had to fight a war on cloud and AI.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “There were a lot of times for that. I mean, I think every company faces that today in that I always felt like there's so much discussion about stakeholder capitalism, right? Do you just serve a shareholder? Do you have multiple? I have always found, and I've been very vocal about that topic, and I participated in the business roundtable, wrote up a new purpose statement that had multiple stakeholders.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I know. So it is. It's just like, oh, I can't hire exactly for her if I'm trying to. But I do know one thing that when people say, well, I can't find these kind of people I'm looking for, I'm like, you're just not looking in the right places.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Diversity to me means Going to get a better product, a better answer. I value different views. And so it's inclusion. Would say inclusion diversity is a number, inclusion is a choice. Can make that choice every single day I really believe, and I've witnessed it, that I've had when my teams are diverse, I get a better answer. My friends are diverse. I have a better life. I mean, all these kinds of things. And so I also believe it's like no silver thread. There's no easy way. You have to authentically believe it. I mean, do you authentically believe that diversity is a good thing?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Woman that worked with me for a very long time. And at one time we were competitors, and then at some point she started to work for me and stayed with me for quite a while. And she was one of the few people that would tell me the truth. And, you know, sometimes I have like a novel already. And she'd be like, do not roll your eyes at this. And you absolutely have got to have that. And I think it also comes, it'll go back to my complete commitment to inclusion and diversity because you got to have that variety around you. You'll get a better product and a better answer at the end of the day. And so that to resist that allure, I think it's around about who you surround yourself with. Current politics would say that too.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “The ways that's very dangerous. I agree with that. I mean, I think you got to be careful who you surround yourself with. That's how I would answer that question, right? And people who will hold the mirror up to you can be done in a very positive way, by the way. It doesn't mean, you know, but that we're sycophants, you cannot have that, right? I mean, it's like, I always say to someone like, hey, listen to me. Tell me what would make me better or do something. I have a husband that'll do that for me quite easily, by the way. You'll always tell me. But he's the one that'll cut you. I have been surrounded myself with a number of people that will do that. And I think you have to have that. I had a...”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “I just want to be recognized for my work. Crossing over from me to we, like it or not, I was a role model for some number of people. And maybe I didn't want to be, but that didn't really matter. So I could either accept that and embrace it or not. I think it's a good example of that transition. I did have a little epiphany with that happening and then I'm like, okay, because I would always be like, no, I won't go on a women's conference. I won't talk here. I won't, you know, no, no, no. But then I sort of realized, wait a second. You know, that old saying you cannot be what you cannot see. And I said to myself, well, wait a second. Okay, I am in these positions. I have a responsibility to, and it's to others. And that's what I meant. I felt like it can be somewhat gradual that you come and you me. I have these like pivotal moments that you see it, but then you feel it and you sort of move over that transom into the power of we.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “So, I think it does help a little bit more gradually. And as you get more confident, you start to not think so much that it's about you and you start to think about this other thing you're trying to accomplish. And so that's why I felt it was a little more gradual. I also felt like I can remember so well. This idea that again now we're in the 80s, 90s, I'm a woman, I'm in technology, and I was down in Australia at a conference. And I gave this great speech again, meat, power of me. You know, I'm thinking I give this great speech financial services. This guy man walks up to me after I think he's going to like ask me some great question. And he said to me, I wish my daughter could have been here. And in that moment And at that point, up to then, I'd always been about look, please don't notice I'm a woman. Do not notice that.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Yeah, because sometimes I think it happens a little, it's maybe not as deliberate. Yeah, it is a little bit more gradual because. Might happen because you realize that geez, I can't get this done alone. So I got to have other people with me. Well, how do I get them to help me do something?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Yeah, but how it's done, right? The how it's done. And so, You know, when you said a leap, do you think people make a leap when they go from thinking about themselves to others? Do you think it's a leap or do you think it kind of just is a sort of slow?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “And that to me comes with when you're an older company that's been around, you realize that society gave you a license to operate and it can take it away. And we see that happen to companies. And therefore, you're like, okay, like why I feel so strong about skills. Hey, if I'm going to bring in, it's going to create all these new jobs, job dislocation, then I should help on trying to help people get new skills. Anyways, that's a long answer to what good tech, but the idea that there's kind of in retrospect a set of principles you could look at and maybe learn something from my sort of rocky road through there.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “I was talking to AI ethics a decade ago, and I'm like, why won't anybody listen to us? You know That's another one of those value things that you realize hey, if I'm going to bring technology in the world, I better bring it safely, right?”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “There's equal, and there are people working on it, but like, okay, the things that say, hey, I can tell this was written with that, right? Because the implications on how people learn, right? If this is not a great thing, if all it does is do your homework, that is not the idea of homework as someone who liked to study so hard. But anyways, you get my point. It's just the upside and the downside.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Right, I believe one of the tenants of good tech is it's like responsibility for the long term. It says, so if you're going to invent something, you better look at its upside and its downside. Like we did quantum computing. Great. A lot of great stuff, right? Materials development, risk management calculations, endless lists one day. On the other side, it can break encryption. That's a bad thing. So we worked equally hard on all the algorithms that would sustain quantum. I think with chat, okay, great.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “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. Then the third change and endure. We kind of talked about that earlier. Focus more on the how and the skills. And then the part on good tech and being resilient. So anyways, I just felt that like Good Tech, everybody's a tech company. I don't care what you do today. And there's some fundamental things you got to do. In fact, pick up today's end newspaper, right? ChatGPT. You're an AI guy.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I had a doctor who's like, you know, this doesn't sound right. I'm coming to you. The surgery was fine. It was me that was reacting wrong to it. And he didn't care until I could walk again. Okay. There's a big difference in those two things. And it's true in any business you have a waiter serves you food. Okay, serves as food. He did his job. Or did he care he had a good time? So that thought to be in service of it took me a while to get that, like to try to write it, to get that across because I think it's like so fundamental. If people were really in service of something, you got to believe that if I fulfill your needs, at the end of the day, mine will be fulfilled.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Me, indulge me one more minute. These sort of again, it's retrospect that I didn't know this in the moment. I had to learn it. I learned it. I am blessed by a lot of people I worked with and around. But some of the principles, like the first one is says. Going to do something, change something, do something, you got to be in service of something. Being in service of is really different than serving. Super different. And I just had my knee replaced Interviewed all these doctors. You can tell the difference the guy was going to do a surgery. Hey, my surgery's fine. I really don't care whether you can walk and do the stuff you wanted to do again, but because my surgery's fine. Your hardware is good. Actually, I had some trou”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Only doing it. It was a really hard thing for me to do because I don't actually talk about all these things. And I had to, nobody cares about your scientific description of this. They want the stories in your life to bring it alive. So it's a memoir with purpose. And in the writing of it, it became the power of me, the power of we, and the power of us. The idea that you build a foundation when you're young, mostly from my work life, the power of we, which says I kind of in retrospect could see five principles on how to really drive change that be done in a good way. And then eventually you could scale that, the power really of us, which is what I'm doing about finding better jobs for more people now that I code this co-chair and organization called 110. So that essence of Navigate tensions, do it respectfully, celebrate progress”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “You have to embrace and navigate tension. This is the world we live in. And by embracing tension, not running from it, you would bridge divides that unites people, not divides them. It's a hard thing to do, but you can do it. You do it with respect, which is the opposite of fear. A lot of people think way to get things done is fear. And then the third thing would be you got to celebrate some progress versus perfection because I also think that's what stops a lot of things from happening because, you know, if you go for whatever your definition of perfect is, it can, it's either polarization or parallelization. I mean, something happens in there versus, no, no, no. I can't worry about getting to that actual exact endpoint. If I keep taking a step forward of progress, really tough stuff can get done. And so my view of that is like, honestly, I hope it can, you know, I said it's like a memoir with purpose.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “So, the essence of it would be doing something hard or meaningful, but in a positive way. I would also tell you, I hope one day. Remembered for how I did things, not just for what I did. I think that could almost be more important. And I think it's a choice we can all make. So the essence to me of good power, if I had a contrast, good to bad, let's say, would be that first off,”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Very, very romantic, and the person who owned the house said, You know, hey, I'm having a party, you're not invited. I'm going to fix you up with someone tonight. And that turned out to be my husband. And so it was a blind date is how we very first met it.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “See, you're So I met my husband when I was 19 years old, so I was a young kid, and I met him when I had a general motor scholarship. So I was at Northwestern University through my first two years, had a lot of loans, financial aid. And a professor said, hey, you should sign up for this interview. They're looking to bring forward diverse candidates through their management track. Now, these programs don't exist anymore like that. They will pay your tuition, your room and board, your expenses Northwestern, other Ivy League schools, these very expensive schools. And I think you'd be a good fit. I am eternally thankful for that advice. I went in, I interviewed. I actually got the scholarship. I mean, without it, I'd have graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. So part of that was in the summer. I had to work in Detroit. I lived in a little room by a cement plant, not theirs, but I mean, that's all I could afford.”

    2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source