[Excerpt] Part III IBM culture (2)

22nd Chapter Principle Leadership
In an organization where the program has become unconstrained by its source and content, and its codified organizational purpose has replaced the organization of personal responsibility, the first task you face is to erase the program itself completely so that the entire closed system breathes fresh air. As a result, I had a 180-degree shift in the organization of the entire IBM program, leaving only a few organizational rules, regulations, and guidance.
We started this shift from a statement of principles. Why should there be a principle? Because I think all high-performing companies are led and managed through principles, not through procedures. Organizational decisions should be made by the leaders who understand the main drivers of the success of the business, and then these leaders will be able to apply these principles to practice intelligently, flexibly and in a local context, depending on the situation.
"But what about ' basic beliefs '?" You may ask, "Can't these basic beliefs continue to survive and be transformed into the principles that you say?" "Unfortunately for this question, my answer is:" No. "Basic beliefs" are the products of the Watson era, and they can only play their part in that era. Although we have been using these basic beliefs for the next few decades, they have evolved from very reasonable principles into something that is simply incomprehensible. So, at best, these basic beliefs are merely clichés of moral preaching, and what we need now is something more visionary and insightful.
So, in September 1993, I drafted 8 principles that, in my view, should be the core pillars of IBM's new culture. In addition, I mailed these 8 principles to all IBM employees around the world in the form of a registered letter. Now, after reading these 8 principles again, I am surprised to see how great the changes in IBM culture have been in the 10 years since the release of these principles.
　　 Here are 8 principles and a brief description of the basic points that they represent:
　　 (1). The market is the driving force behind all our actions.
IBM always has an understanding of what the business should be and how it should operate, and stubbornly adheres to its own set of ideas. In fact, the entire IT industry is faced with this problem. We are all the culprits that complicate technology and turn the technology into waste at once. IBM must focus on customer service and beat its competitors in the process. The success of a company comes first from a successful customer service area, not anywhere else.
　　 (2). In essence, we are a technology company, a pursuit of high-quality technology companies.
There is a lot of controversy about "what our company is" and "what should be the company" two issues. In fact, this is not necessary, because the answer is simple: technology will always be our greatest advantage. The most important thing we need to do is to strive to transform knowledge into products to meet all the needs of our customers. All areas of the company will benefit from this technological advantage, including hardware, software and services.
　　 (3). Our most important success criteria are customer satisfaction and shareholder value.
　From the outside of the company, this is another aspect that we need to emphasize. When I first came to IBM, a lot of people, especially Wall Street analysts, asked me, "What is the benchmark for future IBM success-operating profit, revenue growth?" Or the other? The best measure of a company's success, as I know it, is to raise shareholder value. Moreover, if a company cannot satisfy its customers, it will not be a company that is successful in finance or any other way.
　　 (4). We are an innovative company, we want to minimize bureaucratic habits, and always focus on productivity.
　　For us, this is a daunting task. But fast-changing new markets require that we take on this daunting task and change the way we manage our past. The most entrepreneurial companies, through the expansion of old business and open up new business, accept innovation, dare to take risks and pursue growth. This is exactly the state of mind we need. IBM must act more quickly, work more efficiently, and spend more wisely.
　　 (5). Never lose sight of our strategic vision.
　　A sense of direction and a sense of mission are necessary to achieve success in your career. Because a sense of direction and a sense of mission can make you (whoever you are) doing anything, knowing what's best for you and what's most important.
　　 (6). Our thoughts and actions need a sense of urgency.
　　I like to call this "constructive impatience". We are all more than surveys, research, meetings and discussions, but in this era of industry, speed is often more useful than insight. It is not that planning or strategy should not be developed, but that these plans and strategies will delay the aircraft we are now taking action on.
　　 (7). Outstanding and dedicated staff will be omnipotent, especially when they are working together as a team.
　　The best way to end bureaucracy and Wolidou is to let everyone know that what we value and reward is teamwork, especially the kind of team spirit that focuses on delivering value to our customers.
　　 (8). We will focus on the needs of all our employees and the needs of all communities in which our business is conducted.
　　This is not a bribe-paying polite remark. We want our employees to have the resources and space for personal development, and we also hope that the communities in which our business is conducted are getting better because of our presence.
These 8 principles are an important starting point-not only an important start in defining the new IBM priorities, but also an important initial challenge to the overall process management philosophy. But if we don't find a good way to inject these principles into the DNA of IBM employees, these important start-ups will be hard to gain. Clearly, exhortation and analysis are far from enough.
So what is the power lever? What can a ceo-or a governor or a university president do to make people's attitudes, behaviour and thinking change? Of course, different people have different motivations when they do different things. Some people are for money, some are for progress, others are for recognition. For some, the most effective motivation is fear-or anger, and for others, it doesn't work, and some people look at things that can be harvested in the process or have the opportunity to see the concrete effects of the products they make. Most people may be excited by the fact that their products are aging, and many are motivated by a vision to change.
Over the past 10 years, I have driven IBM's management reforms with all of these power levers.
　　
1. Leadership Cheer up
In the spring of 1994, I held my first senior management meeting in a hotel in Westchester County, New York. Participants included 420 managers from around the world who represented the various departments of the company (and some reporters who were waiting in vain for news interviews in the lobby). One of the most important tasks of the Conference is to shift the attention of these managers from the interests of their concerns to the outside of the company.
The theme of my speech at this meeting was to start with two charts: one on the company's customer satisfaction and the other on market share issues. The problem that the market share chart shows is amazing – since 1985, our market share in the industry has fallen sharply more than half. The customer satisfaction chart also conveys some depressing news: Our customer satisfaction is ranked 11th in the row, and even behind some companies that do not exist at all now! In response to the two performance of poor collective performance, I concluded: "We are becoming the laughingstock of the market and our competitors are robbing our business, so I hope we can start fighting back-that is, in turn making our competitors a laughingstock in the market." It was a game that allowed success and no failure, and we had to win in the market and give our competitors a hard fight. I can assure you that our competitors are looking at these charts with a hostile interest, and they must be saying that we are going to be bankrupt shortly after IBM. ”
I showed them photos of some of the CEOs of our competitor companies. The average person would guess that they would be gates, Maikenili and Ellison. Then I read aloud these people's remarks about contempt for IBM-these conversations not only defy IBM, but also exaggerate the decline of our company and challenge our importance in the industry. For example, Larry Ellison said: "IBM? We don't even want to think about this company. It is not dead yet, but it has been insignificant. ”
"How do you feel about all this happening in the market?" "I asked," These guys have robbed us of our market share. I don't know what you think, but I don't like the fact that it's happening. And I get very angry when we hear someone say something like that about our company. Every time MasterCard used an ad to attack American Express, I knew something was going to happen the next day. When the roof is about to collapse, the general advice is to send a reinforcements to the house to prevent people in the room from doing what they shouldn't. And I don't want to send a reinforcements like this, because I know my job is to keep the people in the House from taking drastic action.
"You know I've received thousands of emails since I came to IBM, and I've read every one of them. What I want to tell you is that, in these emails, I can't think of any one that is passionate about competitors. Most of them are passionate about the problems of other parts of IBM. So here, I have to talk to our competitors about our malicious comments and what we are doing in the market, in the hope of causing everyone's anger. The existence of the company only focuses on the competition among the various departments within the company, and the practice of not paying attention to the competition between the whole company and the external competitors, is not the behavior which should be encouraged, but the vulgar behavior which must be eradicated completely. Because external competitors have begun to invade our hearts, not just the mind, they have to invade our families and take away the money from our children and grandchildren to go to college. That's what they're doing.
"125,000 of IBM's best employees were forced to leave the company, and they lost their jobs. Who caused this? Is it God? It was the invasion of these competitors that caused all this. They took our market and hurt our employees. It is not the other people who have caused all this pain, but the competitors outside the companies that are planning to take away our business. ”
I expressed my perplexity and confusion to the participants about the lack of implementation of the decisions currently in the company and the apparent readiness to endure indefinitely.
"We did not strictly implement the decision-making requirements and their follow-up, and we did not set a deadline for the implementation of the decision, or we did not raise any doubts when these decisions were not implemented." However, we do have some task pressure, and these task pressures will bring new task pressure, but we do not carry out these tasks, because (again) in our eyes, the [company] outside the competition is far from the company's internal competition is important. If reform does not fit its own interests, most of IBM's employees will oppose reform. There is a very powerful word in IBM, the strength of which I do not see in any other company, the word is ' dismiss '. It seems that IBM's decision-making is just some advice, and any refusal can leave these decisions aside. Since I came to IBM, I've found that IBM's market share is continuing to fall as IBM's employees are busy opposing the decisions made by companies a few years ago.
"When you have a market share and such a customer satisfaction, you don't have much time to argue. Now it's our job to get ready for the consensus and start regaining our market share. "It will be a performance-based corporate culture," I said. I will personally look at all the important new job candidates in the company, because I want to find someone who is really doing things, not the leaders who only know the observations and arguments to hold these important posts. ”
I have some ideas about the future opportunities and hopes of the company, and I have told them to everyone at the meeting. I say that, in my opinion, the people who come here are the best elites in the company and the industry, and, with my experience in the company for one year, I believe that the potential of IBM is limitless-but only if we are willing to implement the reform that I have launched, this potential will be fully realized. I then described the changes in behavior necessary to the corporate culture reform (see below).
Behavioral Change Requirements
　　 company self-launched products → customer-oriented (according to customer requirements to produce products)
acting in the company's own way → acting as a customer (providing real service to the customer)
Ethical management → success-oriented management
building decisions based on confidential and myths → building on facts and data
relationship-oriented → performance and standards-oriented
Yiyantang (uniform standard of policy) → Hundred
the wrong thing about people → The wrong thing (asking why instead of asking who)
good wishes are even better than good → responsibilities clear (always able to solve puzzles)
action is more important
USA (Armonk headquarters) → Global share led
rule-oriented → principle-oriented
only pay attention to my value (individual → focus on our value (collectivism) doctrine)
Analyze pauses (pursue hundred points → have a sense of urgency to make decisions and take the perfect line) move (as long as there is 80% Hope)
lack of innovation in the Organization-learning organization
balanced capital investment → key type capital investment
　　"There is no ' excuse ' in my dictionary," I said, "We are going to implement this reform, and we are going to implement it together." It will be a community-to-people reform – both for ourselves and for our colleagues, who will be empowered and given the opportunity to join this reform. If some of you are not comfortable with this reform, then he should consider other options, and for those who are enthusiastic about reform, I welcome you to our team because I know that I alone cannot complete this reform. ”
It was a passionate conversation for me, and I hope the listeners will be able to accept my speech in a passionate manner. I can say that for the majority of the participants, it was also a victory meeting-certainly for those who wished to implement the reform. So what does this meeting mean for other attendees? Of course, all the participants at least expressed their approval for the reform. But it is another matter to turn the intention of reform into a practice of reform.
In fact, in the weeks and months that followed, I heard that while most of the top managers were supportive of reform, they were shocked by the reforms. Of course, they were shocked not by my thoughts and the information of the reforms expressed, but by my passions, my anger and my direction and determination (such as "defeating competitors" and "storming our business") that I conveyed in the reform. Because these are very non-IBM way of doing things, but also very unlike a CEO should be the pie.
I don't feel strange about it-or sad. I'm not trying to impress the top managers, and I'm not going to make a splash. Yes, IBM needs a strong heart-pin shock therapy and a big surgery to open the chest. What IBM desperately needs, however, is for the management team to know who I am and what my style is-and I know that only a few people have shared face-to-head with me. For a variety of reasons, these reforms will expose these managers to themselves in the future, so I have to make them understand my competitive side.
So that's what I'm going to do. Those who know me will tell you that this is not a act of pretending, that I like to beat my competitors, and that I hate failure very much.
　　
2. A new way to become a leader
Soon after that meeting, things began to change. I can feel some exciting things and some hope. Some senior managers have begun to showcase their personal leadership art and are committed to the reform practices that I pursue.
Although I have provided support and encouragement to those who take risks, they are still surrounded by many conservatives who are reluctant to reform. Therefore, the person who dares to take the risk needs both a symbol and a system to make their behavior more effective.
This is the establishment of the February 1995 "Senior Leadership Group" (SLG), the group's first priority is to focus on leadership and reform matters. To this end, members of the group have a few days each year to gather together to discuss the company's development strategy issues, of course, we will spend the same time on the leadership of the art issue of discussion.
Given the importance of the group's symbolic significance-and the need to keep it connected to fresh ideas-I do not think it is necessary to establish the membership of the Group on the basis of a mechanical title or title. What I want is a flexible and vivid role model--no matter where the members are in the org chart and how many people they are managing, a good designer, a good marketer, and a good product developer, like a senior vice president, is a leader.
In addition, the size of the group is also important. It may be too little for me to meet only about 35 senior managers on a regular basis-but, like the first meeting, there are 420 people, and that's too much. I finally decided that the size of the group should not exceed 300 people. Moreover, none of the members is tenure. Every year there is a re-election campaign for the fittest: My senior manager team will gather to rebuild the group. At the re-election meeting, someone would be proposed to be a member of the group, but the proposed person must have the support of the entire team to qualify for membership. The emergence of a new "senior leadership" will mean that an older member of the group is retiring in the near future, or someone will be told that he will be disqualified for not meeting our requirements. Believe it or not, many of the disqualified people, despite being very disappointed at the time, have progressed to become members of the group after our encouragement.
This is a great turning point and a very constructive thing. Of the first senior leadership group, only 71 remained in place by March 2002. The lack of liquidity at IBM's top leaders-and the fact that some of the company's early senior managers themselves clearly do not have team leaders-are key factors in the reform. If the CEO can let high-level-even highly successful senior managers do not mind the new behavior model, then the CEO-led corporate culture transformation activities should be very fast.
Therefore, I put the promotion and reward for the new company culture of senior managers, as my most important task to complete. This will provide a message to managers who are waiting for ascension that the path to success presents a different picture from the past.
Employees are also particularly interested in knowing when they can become members of a senior leadership group. Our answer is to create a series of common standards that allow all leaders to have "IBM Leadership" and act in compliance with these common leadership standards. Just as we are transforming procedural management into principled management-that is, allowing employees to apply these principles in their own way and in accordance with specific circumstances, our leadership standards describe only a few basic requirements, and different people can according to their own leadership style, personality and method characteristics, Adopt a variety of diversified and management methods.
Leadership standards (see below), which is the basis for an IBM company to evaluate each senior manager. Soon, IBM employees will realize that this will be their way of pursuing progress in the new IBM.
　　 IBM's Leadership Model
　　 focus on winning the market
* Insight to customers
* Thinking of innovation
* Motivation to achieve goals
　　 ability to execute quickly
* Team Leader
* Outspoken
* Team Spirit
* Decisive Force
　　 constant kinetic energy.
* Develop organizational skills
* Teaching/Training
* Work Devotion Degree
　　 Core Traits
* Passion for Business
Moreover, all senior managers, including those who report directly to me, must study for 3 days-during these 3 days, they will work with well-trained consultants to understand how their colleagues perceive them in leadership skills and develop a personal plan to improve the art of leadership.
　　
3. Implementation
While I am actively advocating principled leadership and building management training and assessment around leadership standards, it is gratifying that the new approach we have adopted has gradually ceased to have the sort of codification that is common to old methods in the past. That's exactly what I expected-and it also brought significant changes to our leadership behavior and leadership focus (not to mention the contributions of those who discovered the valuable features of the new approach).
Two years later, however, I realized that the transformation of IBM's corporate culture was rigid. The problem is not surprising: it appears on the resurgence of most old methods. More and more IBM employees are beginning to embrace new strategies and like the new cultural strategies that we have to implement, but it is not easy to change the preconceptions of all minds at once. People believe in new IBM, but they are also weighing and comparing-and still working in the old way, as if they were still in old IBM.
I need to adopt new principles and have these principles rooted in the hearts of all IBM employees. To this end, these principles need to be simplified and deepened into the daily work and behavior of employees. Since what people do is not what you expect, but what you want to check, then I have to work out a way to measure the effect of people's action.
After a meeting with a colleague in the second half of 1994, I felt the need to further simplify these principles. "I calculated that until the weekend, you want us to wake up in the morning and pay attention to more than 20 things," the colleague said to me, "I can't do these things." It's not that I'm not good at doing these things, but I don't know what you want your employees to do. ”
Recalling the High-level Management meeting held earlier in the year, I quickly replied, "Strive for success, quick execution and teamwork." "These 3 words captured the purpose of all the words I had at that meeting-and, in my view, they outlined the most important criteria that all IBM employees should adopt when setting their own goals." Fundamentally speaking, these 3 words also define our new corporate culture. They are not empty slogans, in my heart,each of the 3 words has its specific meaning, which are：
*strive to win: All IBM employees should recognize that doing business is a competitive activity, either success or failure, no other choice. In the new IBM, those who lack a competitive passion will not find their place. The key is that the opportunity exists in all branches of the company around the world, not just in the Armonk headquarters in New York, USA. We must define the market as a motive for all our actions and actions.
*Fast Execution: This is a career that needs speed and temper. We can't be a perfectionist anymore, because perfectionism can make us miss out on market opportunities and cause other competitors to take away our technological inventions. Do not blindly study the death, in the new IBM, the successful people are hands-on people-and is fast and effective people to do things.
* Team spirit: To make IBM work like a team-a real team.
"Strive for success, rapid implementation and teamwork" as the maxim through the media throughout the company, and eventually evolved into the company's new performance management system. As part of our annual plan, all IBM employees make a "personal business commitment" (PBCS) around these 3 areas each year, and list the actions that need to be taken in the coming year for these 3 tasks. Of course, the specific methods are determined by their respective types of work, but the general direction should be unified. The PBC program is an effective plan for enforcement, and these corresponding performance will be key determinants of employee performance and activity pay.
Of course, "taking action" ultimately comes down to personal leadership-not only myself, but also thousands of IBM people who are happy to lose stereotypes, are willing to collaborate and want to shape IBM's new culture model. Many of them seem to have woken up and have happily escaped from the rigid and political system.
One of them deserves a special mention: he is Tom Bouchard. After the first hiring of IBM Human Resources director failed, I met Bouchard and hired him for this position, previously, Bouchard in Joint technology company (Unitedtechnologies) and the western Region Telephone Company (U.s.west) as senior staff of human resources department. At the thought of Tom, there would be a bull's-eye in his head: a smart, sensible, pragmatic and hard-working businessman. He does not belong to the traditional human resources director, instead, he is a serious business person. Bouchard's contribution to IBM was the biggest in the company's cultural transformation, so he took it for granted to be another hero in IBM's reform process.
　　
4. Announcing our mission to the moon
Have you ever had the feeling that something in the past is new? It has been said that the lost is always the most beautiful. I think people who say this must have worked for a legendary business empire like IBM.
The Golden age of IBM-most of which is realistic, but at least partly illusory-leaves a deep and strong impression in the minds of some of IBM's employees that, in the eyes of these people, all the changes that are now being made by the company are only getting worse. They always want the reform to stop, ignoring the realities of market and social change.
As it turns out, what drives us to escape the glorious past is IBM's own decline. However, I know that this painful memory does not persist in people's minds forever. So I decided to make the company's crisis extreme and central-not irresponsible, not a general practice-to appear in front of everyone with a happy face, and to announce with optimism that the company would reverse its decline as soon as possible. I didn't fuel the company, but I didn't want people to lose their sense of urgency too soon.
Finally, the company finally ended this period of struggle on the survival line. The disillusionment with old-fashioned things has freed IBM from the shadows of the past. What is it that allows us to embrace the future? The answer is: our e-commerce strategy. I have discussed e-commerce issues from a strategic and operational perspective on corporate integration strategies, but for me, the emergence of e-commerce is even more significant in its impact on the inner world of IBM employees.
I decided to announce e-commerce as our "Moon-landing Program", our inspiring mission and the "s/360" of a new era. We incorporate it into all of our business areas-not only in our advertising, product planning, research programs and customer meetings, but also throughout our dealings and operations-from my e-mail, broadcast systems and city hall visits to our internal transformation measures. It gives us a market-oriented sense of purpose and provides a new foundation for our own actions and practices-in other words, a foundation for our new corporate culture.
More importantly, e-commerce also enables us to shift our focus to the outside of the company. Instead of focusing on our inner circle, we start to focus on the big things in our industry, and we turn our internal discussions from "What we want to be" to "what we want to do".
　　
5. Constant self-renewal
Shortly after joining IBM, I began to realize that the company's past and present corporate culture has its own outstanding advantages--an advantage that no company wants to lose. If we can get the dregs of IBM's corporate culture and extract its essence, we will regain our competitive advantage.
As I write these words, the Quweicunzhen war in the company's culture continues. In fact, IBM is undergoing a huge cultural revolution. "New IBM"-combined with our e-commerce strategy and our focus on the most promising opportunities in the market, we are ready to take off. IBM employees have regained their long-lost vitality, motivation and passion. IBM's leaders-though very different from those of IBM's early leaders-are impressed by the minds of the 300,000 smartest people on Earth.
What will we do in the future? In the next 5 years, two things will happen:
* We will once again fall into the trap of overconfidence. Striving for success, fast execution and teamwork will be like "basic beliefs" and become stale and old-fashioned things. The "Senior leadership group" will also become IBM's former "Management committee".
* On the other hand, we will discover new ways to have an edge and vitality. We are able to constantly practice and constantly update ourselves, and we can turn this constant self-renewal into an eternal part of our culture.
There are not many things that can be lasting. IBM continues to be a leader in a brand new (anti-intuitive) industry because of the combination of environmental conditions, heritage, effort and luck. In my last annual report to IBM shareholders-the 2001 annual report, we introduce these features that lead to IBM's success:
Large but agile, innovative but with a strict normative system, the scientific spirit and market-oriented, able to generate knowledge in the world's capital, and the transfer of these capital to consumers. This new environment will continue to nurture learning, change and self-renewal. It is pragmatic and focused-but it is always welcome to innovate. It rewards results, and most importantly, it shows a talent and passion for everything you do.
Based on decades of experience, knowledge, experience, and unique features, IBM has developed a capability to deal with complex and even apparent internal conflicts. Instead of avoiding or suppressing contradictions, we learn to deal with it and even use it. This is a balance that can be achieved when an enterprise has a very correct sense of self.
It's a tough thing to keep this balance, but I'm optimistic about it. Because once the giant wakes up, it will burst into infinite force. IBM employees have regained awareness of who they are, what they can do and how they do it, and they have regained their dignity and renewed hope.
In addition, the markets on which we live now are hopeful-the most dynamic, competitive and global market economy in history (especially in political, cultural and social contexts). As long as IBM employees stay focused on the outside, the world will be full of vitality.

[Excerpt] Part III IBM culture (2)