YouSaid · the spoken record

Ginni Rometty

lines on the record: 142
first: 2023-03-02
most recent: 2023-03-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Very good point. So I can't really disagree with that. And to me, even when I took on jobs, I always felt people said, well, is it, what point are you confident enough? And I came to sort of believe, again, a theme of my beliefs, that if I was willing to ask lots of questions and understood enough, that's all I needed to know.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now I would take stock of the things I can do right and really think or I look for times to be uncomfortable because I know if I am nervous, like I don't know if you're nervous to meet me. We never met in real person.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am going to say something that's a bit stereotype that it resonates with many, many women. And I'll ask you if it does after, is that either the most harsh critic of themselves. And so this idea that I won't grow unless I can feel uncomfortable doesn't mean I always have to show it, by the way. So that's why I meant growth and comfort can never coexist. I got, I was like, he's exactly right. Now, the end of that story is I went in and I took the job. When I went back to the man who was really my mentor looking out for me, and he looked at me and he said, don't ever do that again. And I said, I understand because it was okay to be uncomfortable. I didn't have to use that. I mean,”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I went to the interview the next day. Blah, blah, blah. Guy says to me, looks at me and he says, I want to offer you that job. And I said, Like to think about it. I said, I want to go home and talk to my husband about it. Looked at me okay. I went home. My husband is sitting there and he says to me, I went on and on about the story, etc. And he says, Do you think a man would have answered it that way? And I said, Says, I know you. He's like six months you're going to be bored. And all you can think of is what you don't know. And he said, and I know these other people. You have way more skill than them, and they think they could do it. And he's like, why? And for me, it internalizes this feeling that.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have. I have shamelessly. As he'll tell you. Okay, so the story behind growth and comfort never coexist, but honestly, I think it's been a really freeing thought for me, and it's helped me immensely since. Mid career. And as I write about it in the book, I mid career and I've been running a pretty big business actually in the fella I work for is going to get a new job. It's going to get promoted. He calls me and he says, hey, you're going to get my job. I really want you to have it. And I said to him, no way. I said, I'm not ready for that job. I got a lot more things I got to learn. That is like a huge job around the world, every product line, development, you name it, every function. I can't do it. He looked at me. He says, Well, I think you should go to the interview”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've heard a lot of my friends and they worry. They said, gee, my kids have never had bad times. And so, what you know, what happens here? So, I don't know, is it required and why you end up not required, but it sure doesn't hurt.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the great companies ever. It's a really interesting question because I was just talking to another colleague who's CEO of another great American company this weekend. He mentioned to me about all this adversity, and he said, or I said to him, I said, Do you think part of your success is because you had bad stuff happen? He said yes, you know, and so I guess I'd be lying if I didn't say, I don't think you have to have tragedy, but it does teach you like one really important thing is that there is always a way forward, always, and it's in your control.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“True enough, true enough, that's true. I learned that very well. But I also think that maybe this isn't the same kind of plan B. I think of it as like I was taught like always be able to take care of yourself. Don't have to rely on someone else. And I think that to me so that's my plan B. I can take care of myself. And it's even after what I lived through with my father, I thought, well, this set a bar for bad after this, nothing's bad. And it's a very freeing thought.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I think I've seen you on other podcasts say, I thought I did. Do you want a plan B? Didn't you say no, you would not like a plan B”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another tragic life. What did she do though? And think how long that's in the 40s, the 50s. She made lampshades. And she taught me how to sew, right? So I could sew clothes when we couldn't afford them. But my memory of my grandma is working seven days a week, sewing lampshades. And then here comes my mom in her situation, who climbs her way out of it. So I associate that with, well, strong women, by the way, all strong women. And I associate hard work with how you are sure you can always take care of yourself. And so I think if the roots go way back there, and they were always teaching something, right? My great-grandma was teaching me how to cook, how to work a farm, even though I didn't need to be on a farm. My grandma taught me, you know, here's how to sew, here's how to run a business. And then my mother would teach us that, look, with just a little bit of education, look at the difference it could make, right?”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I really looked at it, it's no surprise what I do today. And that hard work part, my great-grandma, as you and I were comparing notes on Russia, right? And never spoke English, spoke Russian, came here to this country, was a cleaning person at the Wrigley building in Chicago. Yet if she hadn't saved every dime she made, my mother wouldn't have a home and wouldn't have had car, right? What did I learn from that? Hard work. In fact, actually, when I went to college, she's like, you know, you really should be on a farm. You're so big and strong. That was her view. And then my grandmother.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thought it kind of fell like a pebble in water. Like there's a ring about you really care about yourself and like the power of yourself, power of me. There's a time it transcends to that you are working with and for others. And another moment when it becomes like about society. So my hard work, I'd ask you one day sit really hard and think about when you close your eyes who do you see from your early life, right? And what did you learn? And maybe it's not that hard for you. I mean, it was. Funny, the things then.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the irony that I hear I would end up is the ninth CEO of one of America's iconic companies. And now I co-chair this group 110. And that journey, I said the biggest thing I learned was you could do really hard, meaningful things in a positive way. So now you ask me about why do I work so hard. Ended up writing the book in three pieces for this reason when you really think of your life and power.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. And so that sort of led me down to as I thought about my own life, right? Because it starts in a... Like many of us, you know, you don't have a lot, but you don't know that because you're like everybody else around you at that time. And on one end tragedy, right? My father leaves my mother, homeless, no money, no food, nothing. Four kids. She's never worked a day in her life outside of a home.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enjoyed it, so I will be the first, and I'm really careful to say that to people because I don't think everyone should associate G to do what you did. You have to, there's only one route there, right? And that's just not true. And I do it because I like it. In fact, I'm careful. And as time goes on, you have to be careful as more and more people watch you, whether you like it, you're a role model or not. You are a role model for people, whether you know it, like it, want it, does not matter. I learned that the hard way. And I would have to say people, hey, just because I do this does not mean I do it for these reasons, right? So be really explicit. And I'd come to believe usually when people say the word power, I don't know, do you have a positive or negative notion when I say the word power? We'll just do it.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I have been married 43 years, and that seems to work. But that idea that you could be in the moment with people is a really important thing.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did it for two reasons. Early on, I think it was a shield for confidence. The more I studied, the more prepared I was, the more confident. That's probably still true to this day. The second reason I did it evolved over time and became different to prepare. If I was really prepared, then when we're in the moment, I can really listen to you. See, because I don't have to be doing all this stuff on the fly in my head. And I could actually take things I know and maybe help the situation. So it really became a way that I could be present in the moment. And I think that's something a lot of people that in the moment, I learned it from my husband. He doesn't prepare, by the way, at all. So that's not it. But I watch the in the moment.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it came from a few different places. I mean, one would have been as a kid, I think. I was not a memorizer, and my brother is brilliant. He read it once, boom, done. And so I always wanted to understand like how something happened. It didn't matter what it was I was doing, whether it was algebra theorems. I always wanted, don't give me the answer. Don't give me the answer. You know, I want to figure it out, figure out. So I could reproduce it again and didn't have to memorize. So it started with that. And then over time, okay, so I was in university in the 70s. When I was in engineering school, I was the only woman. You know, I meet people still to this day and they're like, oh, I remember. I'm like, yeah, sorry, I don't remember you. There were 30 of you, one of me. And I think you already get that feeling of, okay, I better really study hard because whatever I say is going to be remembered in this class. Good or bad. And it started there. So in some ways”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but there's roots in that go back deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply. And I think it's an interesting reason. So why do you're a preparer, my friend? Yeah. Yes, you are. You prepare for your interviews. Rest you wing.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatever you're in service of. And the other thing was, I really felt it was really important to role model learning, right? Know, I can remember when we started down the journey and we went on to this thing called a think academy, IBM's longtime motto had been think. And we said, okay, I'm going to make the first Friday of every month compulsory education. And okay, I mean everybody, like everybody, I don't care what your job is, okay? When the whole company has to transform, everybody's got to have some skin in this game and understand it. I taught the first hour of every month for four years. Okay, I had to learn something. But it made me learn. But I'm like, okay, if I can teach the shoe, you can do it, right? I mean, you know, kind of thing”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They came, said something, I talked to my boss. I'm a first time manager, and he was unequivocal with what I should do. He said, and this was a top performer. It stops immediately or you fire him. So there are a few areas like that that I actually think you have to always continue to. That to me isn't the kind that, like, when do you let go of stuff, right? So”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Show people that you walk your talk on that kind of thing is super important. And I actually think it's a struggle young companies have because the values aren't deeply rooted. And when a storm comes, it's easy to uproot. And so I always felt like when it was that time, I showed it. I got taught that so young at IBM and even General Motors that In fact, I write, I do write about that in the book. First time I was a manager. I had a gentleman telling dirty jokes And not to me, but to other people, and it really offended people and some of the women. This is the very early 80s.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a good question because like a really flip answer would be. It gets bigger, you have no choice but to just, you know, you can't do it, you have to You have to tell or show. I Got to let people find their way because it's so big you can't, right? That's an obvious answer. Scope of work, bigger it gets. Okay, I've got to let more stuff go. I have always believed that a leader's job is to do as well. And I think there's like a few areas. That are really important that you always do. Now it doesn't mean you're showing. So like when it has to do with values and value-based decisions, like I think it's really important to constantly”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I learned something. Okay, some of them did fantastic. And others, they're like, well, let me school you on everything. But they didn't realize like we did really mission critical work. And then break a bank. I mean, they would not understand the certain kind of security and the auditability and everything they had to go on. And then I watched IBM people say, oh, I actually could learn something. We're like, yeah, okay, I don't know how to do that. That's a really good thing I could learn. And in the end, there was not like one group was a winner and one was a loser. The winners were the people who were willing to learn from each other. I mean, it was to me, it was a very stark example of that point. And I saw it firsthand. So that's why I'm so committed to this idea about skills first. And that's how people should be hired, promoted, paid. You name it.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I saw it firsthand when we were beginning this path down the cloud and AI. And we said, and people would say, oh, IBM, it's existential. They got to change and all these things. And I did hire a lot of people from outside, very willing to learn new things. Come on in, come on in. I sometimes say shiny objects, trained in shiny objects. Come on in. But I saw something, it was another one of these. You're not a shiny object. I'm not saying that.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's what we triangulated around it lots of ways. And now, look, they're at the heart of it, what it would do is change. You don't think of buying skills. You think of building skills. And when you think that way, with so many people, and I think this country, many developed countries being disenfranchised, you got to bring them back into the workforce somehow. And they got to get some kind of contemporary skills. And if you took that approach, you can bring them back into the workforce.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you should not be. And I, you know, I'm vice chair at Northwestern, one of the vice chairs. But I said, I just really like aptitude does not equal access. These people didn't have access, but they had aptitude. It changed my whole view to skills first. And so now for hiring, that's kind of a long story to tell you. The number one thing I would hire for now is somebody's willingness to learn. You know, you can test, you can try different ways, but their curiosity and willingness to learn. Hands down, I will take that trait over anything else they have”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which takes me to now what I'm doing in my post retirement. I'm like, this idea that don't hire just for a college degree, we had 99% of our hires were college and PhDs. And I'm all for it. So you're very, don't I'm deeply”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone's an expert at something and has just done that for 30 years, the odds of them really wanting to change a lot are pretty low. And when you're in a really dynamic industry, that's a problem. And so, okay, those are kind of my first revelation on this. And then when I look to hiring, I can remember when I started my job and we needed cyber people. And I go out there and I look. Unemployment in the US was almost 10%. Can't find them. Okay, it's 10% and I can't find the people. Okay, what's the issue? Okay, they're not teaching the right things. That led me down a path and it was serendipity that I happened to do a review of corporate social responsibility. We had this one little fledgling school in a low-income area. And high school with a community college, we gave them internships, direction on curriculum. Lo and behold, we could hire these kids. I said, hmm, this is not CSR. Like, I just found a new talent pool.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, oh boy, that's a long skills is a really long topic in and of itself. I try to put my view in it. I learned a lot and I changed my view on this a lot. I'll go back at my very beginning, say 40 years ago. I would have said at that point, okay, I was always in a hurry. I was interviewing to hire people. I don't know how you hire people. 40 years ago, I'd be like, okay, I got to fit in these interviews. I got to hire someone to get this done. Okay. Then time would go on. I'm like, oh, that's not very good. In fact, someone said to me, hey, hire the best people to work for you and your job gets a lot easier. Okay. I should spend more time on this topic. I spend more time on it. Then it was like, okay, hire experts. Okay. Okay. Hired a lot of experts over my life. And then I was really like an epiphany and it really happened over my tenure running the company and having to change skills.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's had to change go back to what is them them, you know. And when you do that, that back to be essential, we kind of started with, hey, it's be essential. Then the next thing I did with the team was say, okay, now this means new era of computing, new buyers are out there. And we better have new skills. Okay, now the next thing, how do you operationalize it? And it just takes some time, but you can engineer that and get people to build belief.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to do differently. When you had to change a company, it's really tempting to say throw everything else out back to that what must endure, right? But I know when I took over to start, I knew how much he had to change. The more I got into it, I could see, wow, a lot more had to change, right? Because we needed a platform. We'd always done our best when we had a platform, a technology platform. You will go back in time and you'll think of the mainframe systems. You'll think of the PC. You'll think of perhaps middleware. You know, you could even call services a platform. We needed a platform, the next platform here to be there. Skills. When I took over, we inventoried who had modern skills for the future. It was two out of 10 people for the future. Not that they didn't have relevant skills today, but for the future, two out of 10 yikes. That's a big problem, right? The speed at which things were getting done that has to, so you got so much to do. And you say, is that a scary thing? Yes. Do you have to sometimes dictate yes? But I did find, and it is worth it, I know every big company I know, my good friend that runs General Motors.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, because I actually, A, there's a leader for a time, but then there's a leader for a situation, right? And so I've had to do plenty of unpopular things. I think anytime you have to run a company that endures a century and has to endure another century, you will do unpopular things. You have no choice. And I often felt I had to sacrifice things for the long term. And whether that would have been really difficult things like, you know, job changes or reductions, or whether it would be things like, hey, we're going to change the way we do our semiconductors and a whole different philosophy. You have no choice. I mean, and in times of crisis as well, you got to be, I always said it's not a popularity contest. So that's none of these jobs or popularity contests. I don't care if your company's got one person or half a million. They're not popularity contests.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, I probably reduce the layers of management by half. And so that has lots of benefits, right? Time to a decision, more autonomy to people. And then the idea of like faster clarity of where you're going because you're not just filtered through so many different layers. And I think it's the kind of thing a lot of companies, if you're big, have to just keep going through. It's kind of like grass grows. You know, it just comes back and you got to go back down and work on it. So it's a natural thing. But I hear so many people talk about it, Lex, this idea of like, okay, well, who makes a decision? You've often heard nobody can say yes and everybody can say no. And that's actually what you're trying to get out of a system like that.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How to do it correctly. That's right versus because everybody talks about it. But the idea that you would really have small multidisciplinary teams work from the outside in, set those sort of interim steps, you know, take the feedback, pivot, and then do it on not just products, do it on lots of things. It's a hard to do at scale. People always say, oh, I got this agile group over here of 40 people, but not when you're a couple hundred thousand people. You got to get a lot of people to work that way”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They couldn't. They're just like do the same thing faster. If someone tells you you got hiking boots and they're like, no, go run a marathon. You're like, I can't do it in those boots. But so you've got to do something. And at first, I think the ways for big companies, I would call them like blunt clubs. You do what everyone does. You reduce layers. Because if you reduce layers, decisions go faster. There's just, it's math. If there's less decision points, things go faster. You do the blunt club thing. And then after that, though, it did lead me down a long journey. They sound like buzzwords, but if you really do them at scale, they're hard around things like Agile. And because you've really got to change the way work gets done. And we ended up training, God, hundreds of thousands of people on that stuff to really change it.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, we had a lot of catching up to do and a lot of things to do, and it was moving so fast. And as you well know, all those trends were happening at once, which made them go even faster. And so pretty unprecedented, actually, for that many trends to be at one time. And I used to say to people, go faster, go faster, go faster. And honestly I'm tired of him out. I mean, it kind of dawned on me When you're that big It's a really valuable lesson, and it taught me like the hows, perhaps more important than the what. Because if I didn't do something to change how work was done, like change those processes or give them new tools, help them with skills.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You would for lots of reasons. I think when you're a big company, sometimes people think of process as the client themselves. I always say to people, your process is not your customer. There is a real customer here that you exist for. And that's really easy to fall into because people are a master to this process. And that's not right. And when you're big, the other thing in boy, there's a premium on it is speed, right? That in our industry, you got to be fast and go back like when I took over and it was 2012.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, secure in this world. That's like everything. In fact, when I started, I almost felt people were looking for what that was. And together we sort of, in a word, was to be essential. And the reason I loved that word was. Can't call myself essential. You have to determine I am, right? So it was to be essential, even though some of what we did is exactly what you said. Over the years, it's changed so much. And today, it's really a software and consulting company. Consulting is a third of it. And the software is all hybrid cloud and AI. That would not have been true, as you well know, back even two decades ago, right? So it changes. But I think at its core, it's that be essential. You said moonshot can't all be moonshots because moonshots don't always work, but mission critical work.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the part they should endure ends up being a company that does things that are essential to the world, meaning, um, Who we think back you said you're romantic. It was the 30s of social security system. It was putting the man on the moon. It was, you know, to this day, banks don't run, you know, railroads don't run. That is at its core. It's doing mission-critical work. And so that part, I think, is at its core. It's a business-to-business company. And at its core, it's about doing things that are really important to the world becoming running and being better.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. No, well, certainly the research part itself is over 3,000. So it's not that small. That's a pretty big research part.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest challenges, I think, are not in running them, it's in changing them. That idea to know what you should change and what you should not change. Actually, people don't always ask that question, what should endure, even if it has to be modernized, but what should endure? And then I found the hardest part was changing how work got done at such a big company.”
2023-03-02 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source