Gerstner Quotes & Sayings

The networked world offers the promise that maybe the information technology industry will start to, for the first time in a decade or so, address CEO-level issues. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

We have already shown that there is no such thing as free will. That's a will-o'-the-wisp. You never make choices without reasons, not as a responsible or a rational person — John Gerstner

Visit USA.gov and you'll find thousands of directorates, agencies, boards, offices, and services replete with overlapping responsibilities, ancient priorities, and divided accountability. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I initially wanted to be a teacher, and then I was going to become an engineer and build bridges and highways, but pretty soon I went into the business world. I never did get to be a teacher except in a different way. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

What I'm trying to do is deliver results, not promises; results, not vision; results, not concepts. The world is cynical about IBM's promises. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

A lot of people saved IBM. Yes, I was the leader of that team, but I could never have done it without a group of IBMers helping me. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

When a manufacturing company in Spain looks to IBM for a solution to a problem, they expect us to bring the best of IBM worldwide to it, not just the experience of IBM Spain. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I want to take IBM back to its roots. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

It's been said that every institution is nothing but the extended shadow of one person. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The idea of a hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a just and holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally, that the only person who would have enough authority to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus Himself. — John Gerstner

I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk. — Lou Gerstner

You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks. — Lou Gerstner

Alongside getting faith out of a heart that is utterly hostile and unbelieving, making a silk purse out of a sow's ear or getting blood from a turnip is child's play. — John Gerstner

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success - along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like ... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. — Lou Gerstner

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn. — Lou Gerstner

The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision. — Lou Gerstner

To the artist He is the one altogether lovely, and to the educator He is the master teacher. To the philosopher He is the wisdom of God, and to the lonely He is a brother; to the sorrowful, a comforter to the bereaved, the resurrection and the life. And to the sinner he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin from the world. — John Gerstner

People don't do what you expect but what you inspect. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I think that my leadership style is to get people to fear staying in place, to fear not changing. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency. — Lou Gerstner

No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive. — Lou Gerstner

Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The more successful enterprises are the more they try to replicate, duplicate, codify what makes us great. And suddenly they're inward thinking. They're thinking how can we continue to do what we've done in the past without understanding that what made them successful is to take risks, to change and to adapt and to be responsive. And so in a sense success breeds its own failure. And I think it's true of a lot of successful businesses. — Lou Gerstner

So when we call pain a problem, we claim we do not deserve it. We are even prepared to scuttle God to maintain our own innocence. We will say that God is not able to do what He would like, or He would never permit persons such as ourselves to suffer. That puffs up our egos and soothes our griefs at the same time. "How could God do this to me?" is at once an admission of pain and a soporific for it. It reduces our personal grief by eradicating the deity. Drastic medicine, indeed, that only a human ego, run wild, could possibly imagine. — John Gerstner

Everything starts with the customer. — Lou Gerstner

Our military should be trained and structured around missions, not the elements of air, water, and land. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out. — Lou Gerstner

If the perfect Son of God is unattractive to you, then obviously you are an unattractive person. — John Gerstner

If the practices and processes inside a company don't drive the execution of values, then people don't get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them? — Lou Gerstner

Quite frankly, I am not very comfortable in chitchat. When I go to board meetings, I arrive two minutes before and leave when it's over. I don't stay for lunch or go early and have coffee. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I firmly believe that IBM's size can be used to its advantage. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The value that some analysts put on revenue vs. what they put on profit is out of whack. If you can grow real cash earnings, that's 80% of what you ought to do, and the revenue component is 20%. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Every now and then, a technology comes along that is so profound, so powerful, so universal, that its impact will change everything. It will transform every institution in the world. It will create winners and losers, will change the way we do business, the way we teach our children, communicate and interact as individuals. — Lou Gerstner

I've been accepted at Cambridge University. I want to study Chinese history and archaeology. I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Lou Gerstner knows how to do a deal, and George Bush Sr., less so. — Lou Gerstner

The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov. — Lou Gerstner

My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn't have a lot of money. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The fundamental issue is: In the world of the Internet, is there a place for a packager of services? Does the customer want to go surf the Net and go to every one of 50,000 Web sites? Or will people pay a reasonable amount for somebody to go out and preselect and package what they want? My guess is they will both coexist. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

You know, you don't need a leader to sort of administer something that's going very well. In fact, in one sense, an overly ambitious person in that circumstance can probably screw it up. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Compensation needs to be predominately performance-driven. If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

This really is a merger of equals. I wouldn't have come back to work for anything less than this fantastic opportunity. This lets me combine my two great loves - technology and biscuits. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Whether the task is fixing health care, upgrading K-12 education, bolstering national security, or a host of other missions, the U.S. is better at patching problems than fixing them. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

We do not need Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education; we need a single Department of Skills that will promote an integrated approach to global competitiveness. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins. — Lou Gerstner

For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions — Lou Gerstner

The Internet is ultimately about innovation and integration, but you don't get the innovation unless you integrate Web technology into the processes by which you run your business. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

It's about communication. It's about honesty. It's about treating people in the organization as deserving to know the facts. You don't try to give them half the story. You don't try to hide the story. You treat them as - as true equals, and you communicate and you communicate and communicate. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Successful enterprises are built from the ground up. You can't assemble them with a bunch of acquisitions. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything. — Lou Gerstner

What we believe is going to be very important is the delivery of traditional software and services and hardware over the Net. That's a form of electronic marketplace. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture. — Lou Gerstner

The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I think values are really, really important, but I also think that too many values are just words. — Lou Gerstner

When I arrived at IBM, there were 'Team' signs all around. I asked, 'How do people get paid?' They told me, 'We pay people based on individual performance.' — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Vision is easy. It's so easy to just point to the bleachers and say I'm going to hit one over there. What's hard is saying, OK, how do I do that? What are the specific programs, what are the commitments, what are the resources, what are the processes we need in play to go implement the vision, turn it into a working model that people follow every day in the enterprise. That's hard work. — Lou Gerstner

The main thing between you and God is not so much your sins; it's your damnable good works. — John H. Gerstner

I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game; it is the game — Lou Gerstner

The next thing is: we can make IBM even better. We brought IBM back but we're gunning for leadership. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it. — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians. — Lou Gerstner