For today’s blog, I want to reflect on an article in the January 1 edition of The New York Times entitled “Even A Giant Can Learn To Run.” The article discusses the outgoing CEO of I.B.M, Samuel J. Palmisano, and the steps he took to drive transformational change throughout I.B.M. over the course of the past decade. Shortly after assuming the position of CEO, Mr. Palmisano developed a “guiding framework” of four questions to create focus and prod the company out of its complacency with the goal of making it great again. Here are the four questions:
Samuel J. Palmisano used four questions to keep IBM one step ahead. Photo by The New York Times.
- “Why would someone spend their money with you – what’s so unique about you?”
- “Why would somebody work for you?”
- “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography – their country?”
- “Why would somebody invest their money with you?”
The focus on these four dimensions, customers, employees, society and shareowners, shaped I.B.M.’s strategy and resulted in divestitures of their personal computing and disk drive businesses. They, in turn, acquired higher-margin service and software businesses to position themselves as a company that helps their customers use technology to solve business challenges through data mining and analytics.
I encourage you to read the entire article to gain a greater appreciation of something we talk a lot about in the Strategic Innovation Academy – that innovation can take place anywhere – in any function or process or company – whether it is a start-up or a well-established corporation.
