Lex Fridman Podcast - #362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Ginni Rometty is a former long-time CEO, president, and chairman of IBM. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil - ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off EPISODE LINKS: Ginni's book: https://amzn.to/3KFuXHY Ginni's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GinniRometty Ginni's linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/GinniRometty One Ten Website: https://oneten.org PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (05:22) - IBM (15:02) - Hiring (20:19) - Leadership (27:02) - Hard work (32:43) - Adversity (39:41) - Power (53:07) - Sacrifice (58:13) - Taking over as CEO (1:16:27) - Negotiating (1:21:34) - Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov (1:26:52) - IBM Watson (1:46:45) - Work-life balance (1:53:49) - Advice for young people

The following is a conversation with Jeanne Vermetti, who was a longtime CEO, president, and chairman of IBM, and for many years, she was widely considered to be one of the most powerful women in the world. She's the author of a new book on power, leadership, and her life story called Good Power, coming out on March 7th. She is an incredible leader and human being, both fearless and compassionate. It was a huge honor and pleasure for me to sit down and have this chat with her. And now a quick few second mention of eSpawnsir. Check them out in the description. It's the

best way to support this podcast. We got athletic greens for health, express VPN for privacy and security and inside track or for biological monitoring. Choose wise and my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring, go to lexfiedman.com slash hiring. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens and the AG1 Drink, which is an all in one daily drink

to support better health and people's performance. I've drank it twice today already. It's delicious and it's a refreshing start for usually the second work session of the day. I start the day with a cup of coffee and just deep, deep, deep focus on the hardest task of the day, and then I break the fast-well flutter greens, either with a workout before or if I'm not working out that day, just with a kind of mental break. Affair to fair amount has recently been pushing me to meditate and so I've been taking that midday

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And it was unclear what the internet is going to become. And so there's that hacker, I guess ethic, there's also kind of deep sense of freedom. Before big companies came in and tried to figure out how to make a lot of money and really through that process of capitalism able to get kind of control, but I'm actually very, very happy to a degree that internet has maintained its freedom, but still I think some of the initial days of the real kind of almost an archic freedom has dissipated somewhat. I think about that sometimes, and I think that's what a VPN represents to me is a kind of statement of freedom of Protecting your identity of respecting your privacy

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And basically analyze what can be optimized about your body. I think there's a lot of interesting approaches to the way you optimize your body. I think there's a lot of interesting approaches to the way you optimize your body. It's important to have that data and it's important to make the right decisions based on that data, but not over obsess about the data. And that's a really nice balance. Now, if you're just completely blind

and just kind of hope everything's gonna turn out okay until you end up in a hospital, that's not the way to go. So the balance there for me is you should be taking blood tests like with the inside tracker and getting information about your body that you can get from that data and then make decisions based on that and then that's it. Pick the low hanging fruit of that fruit tree that represents the problem. I guess what that horrible metaphor means is that you should fix the easy problems and that means the things that are obviously wrong based on the data you collect from your

blood. Okay, get special savings for a limited time when you go to inside tracker.com slash Lex. This is the Lex treatment podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Jeannie Romani. You worked at IBM for over 40 years starting starting as a systems engineer, and you ran the company as chairman, president, CEO from 2011 to 2020. IBM is one of the largest tech companies in the world with, maybe you can correct me on

this, with about 280,000 employees. What are the biggest challenges running the company of that size? Let's start with us with a big overview question. The biggest challenges I think are not in running them, it's in changing them. And 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.

It's such a big company. What was the part that you thought should endure? The core of the company that was beautiful and powerful and could persist through time, that it should persist through time? I'd be interested, do you have a perception of what you think it would be? Do I have a perception? Well, I'm a romantic for a history of long-running companies, so there's kind of a tradition as

an AI person. To me, IBM has some epic sort of research accomplishments where you show off, you know, DeBlue and Watson, just impressive, big moonshot challenges in accomplishing those. But that's, I think, a probably a small part of what IBM is. That's mostly like the sexy public facing part. Yeah. Well, certainly the research part itself is over 3,000. So it's not that small.

That's a pretty big research. Yes, it's big, yes. But the part that should endure ends up being company that does things that are essential to the world, meaning the who, you know, think back, you said you're a romantic. It was the 30s, the 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. Running the infrastructure of the world, so doing it at scale, doing it reliably. 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 love that word was I 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 is below the surface so many people because people say to me Well, what does IBM do now, right? And 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 it's core. It's that be essential. You said moons shot can't all be moon shots, because moon shots don't always work,

but mission critical work. So given the size though, when you started running it, did you feel the sort of thing that people usually associate with size, which is bureaucracy, and maybe the aspect of size of hinder progress or hinder pivoting, did you feel that? You would.

For the last few reasons, I think when you're a big company, sometimes people think of processes the client themselves. Or I would 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, 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. 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've tired them out. I mean, it kind of dawned on me that when you're that big, that's a really valuable lesson.

And it taught me like the house, 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, they couldn't, they just just 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 way it's for big companies, I have fun calling my 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, you know, a long journey

of they sound like buzzwords, but if you really do them at scale, they're hard around things like agile. And because you really got to change the way work gets done. And we ended up training, got hundreds of thousands of people on that stuff. To really change it. I'm not going to do it correctly. On how to do it correctly. That's right, versus, because everybody talks about it.

But the idea that you would really have small, multitasking plenary teams work from the outside in, set those sort of interim steps, take know, take the feedback, pivot, and then do it on not just products, do it on lots of things. It's hard to do at scale. People always say, oh, I got this agile group over here, 40 people, but not when you're a couple hundred thousand people, you got to get a lot of people to work that way. The blonde club thing you're talking about, but so flattened organizations, much less

possible. Yeah, yeah, I probably reduced the layers of management by half. And so it does 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 a copac town and work on it. So it's a natural thing. But I hear so many people talk about it, like this idea of like, okay, 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. say yes and everybody can say no. And that's actually what you're trying to get out of a system like that. So, I mean, your book in general, the way you lead is very much about we and us, the power of we. But is there times when a leader has to step in and be almost autocratic,

take control and make hard, unpopular decisions? Oh, I am sure you know the answer to that. And it is, of course, yes. It's a fun to care you say. course, yes. Funds it. Yeah. You know, because I actually, um, 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 job changes or reductions, or whether it would be things like, hey, we're gonna change the way we do our semi-conductors. And a whole different philosophy. You have no choice. I mean, and in times of crisis as well, you gotta be, I would say it's not a popularity contest.

So that's none of these jobs are popularity contest. I don't give you, companies got one person, or half a million, they're not popularity contest. But psychologically, is it difficult to just sort of step in as a new CEO and to, because you're fighting against tradition, against all these people that act like experts of their thing, and they are experts of their thing

to step in and say we have to do differently. When you add a change of 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 had to change, 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, if I, we inventory it, 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, 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, as 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 could do 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. And for the skills, that means hiring and the means training? Yes. Oh, boy, that's a long. Skills are 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, OK, I was always in a hurry of I was interviewing to hire people. I don't know how you hire people. 40 years ago, I would have said at that point, okay, I was always in a hurry of 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 would say 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, higher experts, okay Okay, I 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 If someone's an expert at something and has just done that for 30 years The eyes 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, that was kind of my first revelation on this. And then when I looked at hiring, I can remember when I started my job, we needed cyber people. And I go out there and I look, unemployment in the US was almost 10%. I 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 to path and it was serendipity that I happened to do in 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. Oh, behold, we could hire these kids. I said, hmm, this is not CSR, like I just found a new talent pool, 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 a fan. No, you're not be and I you know, I'm vice-chair at Northwestern one of the vice-chair Yeah, but 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 willing this 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 they'll say have. So the interview process, the question to ask everything changed the kind of things you talked about is try to get at how curious they're about the world testing and I mean there's what we try and go at it run 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 see you think of building skills and when you think that way with so many people and I think this country many developed countries being disenfranch, 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. Yeah, I think some interesting combination of humility and passion. Because like you said, experts sometimes lack humility. If they call themselves an expert for a few too many years. So you have to have that beginner's mind and a passion to be able to aggressively constantly be a beginner at everything and learn and learn and learn.

You know, I saw it firsthand when we were beginning this path, you know, down the cloud and AI and we said, and people would say, oh, IBM, you know, it's existential. They got a 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. And 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. 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. Some are like, yeah, okay, I don't know how to do it. That's a really good thing I could learn.

And in the end, there was not like one group was a winner and 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. Yeah, the AI in general, it seems like nobody really understands now what the future will look like. Well, I'll try and figure it out. So like what, I be able to look like in 50 years in relation to the software business to AI is unknown. Well, Google will look like what all these companies

were trying to figure it out. And that means constantly learning, taking risks, all those things. And nobody's really skilled in AI. Because you're absolutely right. That's right. Couldn't agree more with you on that. You wrote in the book, speaking of hiring, quote, my drive for perfection often meant, I only focused on what needed to change

without acknowledging the positive. This could keep people from trusting themselves. It could take me a while to learn that just because I could point something out didn't mean I should. I still spotted errors, but I became more deliberate about what I mentioned and sent back to get fixed.

I also tried to curtail my tendency to micromanage and let people execute. I had to stop assuming my way was the best or only way. I was learning that giving other people control builds their confidence and that constantly trying to control people destroys it. So what's the right balance between showing the way and helping people find the way? That is a good question because like a really flip answer would be, as it gets bigger, you have no choice but to just, you know, you can't do it, you have to tell or show. I mean, you've gotta 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. But 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 show people that you walk your talk on that kind of thing. It's super important. And I actually think it's the struggle young companies have because the values aren't deeply rooted and when the 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 fact, 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. And 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 role model and show, right? That to me isn't the kind that like when you let go of stuff, right? So the values and relationships with clients. Yeah, whatever you're in service of. And the other thing was, I really felt it was really important to role model learning, right? So, you know, I can remember when we started down the journey and we went on to this thing called a Think Academy IBM's long time 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 get, like, I have some skin in this game and understand it. I taught the first hour of every month for four years. Now, okay, I had to learn something. But it made me, but I'm like, okay, if I can teach this, you can do it, right? I mean, you know, kind of thing. So it was a compulsory Thursday night education for you. I'm a little bit better prepared than that.

Okay, sure. But yeah, you're so right. Yes. So you prepare. Yeah. That's another habit. You like to prepare? Yeah, but there's roots in that go back deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, and I think it's an interesting reason. So why do why are you you're prepared, my friend?

Yeah, yes, you are. Are you prepared for your interviews? Uh, sure. The rest you wing. Yeah, I wing. But that's okay. I mean, you do have to prepare everything. I don't prepare everything either. No, but I unfortunately wing stuff. I save it to last minute. I push everything. I'm always almost late. And I don't know why that is. I mean, there's some deep psychological thing we should probably investigate, but it's probably the anxiety brings out the performance. That can be. That's very true with some people. I mean, so I'm a programmer engineer at heart. And so programmers famously overestimate or underestimate, sorry, how long something's going to take. And so I just, everything always underestimates. And it's almost as if I want to feel this chaos of anxiety of a deadline or something like

this. Otherwise, I'll be lazy sitting on a beach with a peanut collada and relaxing. Yeah. I don't know. So that we have to know ourselves. But for you, you like to prepare. 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 was brilliant. He can read it once, boom, done. And so I always wanted to understand

like how something happened. So it didn't matter what it was I was doing. Whether it was algebra, theorems, I always wanted it. Don't give me the answer. Don't give me the answer. I want to figure it 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, 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, 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. Negative. No, no, no, no, he died. And I'm not going to at all. So that's not it. But I watched the in the moment. The negative example.

No, no, no, no, I'm not going to change that. As he says, it's tied to the M&A, okay? So I love works. And I have been married 43 years, that seems to work. So, but that idea that you could be in the moment with people is a really important thing. Yeah, so the preparation gives you the freedom to really be present.

So just a link on the you mentioned your brother and it seems like in the book that you really had to work hard when you study to to sort of given that you weren't good at memorization you really truly deeply want to understand the stuff and you put in the hard work and that seems to persist throughout your career. So hard work and that seems to persist throughout your career. So, you know, hard work is often associated with sort of has negative associations. Maybe with burnout, with the satisfaction. Is there some aspect of hard work at the core of who you are that led to happiness for you? Did you enjoy it? I enjoyed it. So I'll 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. It's 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, I just because I do this does not mean. I do it for these reasons, right? It's a 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're just doing. Probably a negative one, yeah. 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, not rather do good.

And I think the irony is you need power to do good. And so that sort of led me down to, and it was, 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 I want to 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. And I, the irony of that I hear I would end up as 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 asked me about why do I work so hard. I ended up writing the book in three pieces for this reason. When you really think of your life and power, I thought it kind of fell like a pebble and 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 in 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, it's funny. The things then, 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 Riggly Building in Chicago. Yet, if she hadn't saved every time she made, my mother wouldn't have a home and wouldn't have had a 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. You know, that was her view. And then my grandmother, 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 the her situation who 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 at 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, here's how to sew,

here's how to run a business. And then my mother would teach us that, look, just a little bit of education. Look at the difference it could make, right? So anyways, that's a long answer to. I think that hard work thing is really deeply rooted from that background. It gives you a way out from hard times. 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? Yeah, I don't want to be. Because you're like, I would prefer my backup against, am I? You have a story like that. You seem to like, at least certain moments in your life seem to do well in desperate times. True enough, true enough that's true.

I learned that very well. But I also think that maybe this is 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 we have to rely on someone else? Sure. 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 is set a bar for bad. After this, nothing's bad. And that is a very freeing thought.

The being able to take care of yourself is that, you mean practically, or do you mean just a self-belief that I'll figure it out? I'll figure it out and practically both, right? So you wrote, quote, I vividly remember the last two weeks of my freshman year when I only had 25 cents left. I put the quarter in a clear plastic box on my desk and just stared at it. This is it I thought no more money.

So do you think there's some aspect of that financial stress, even desperation, just being hungry? Does that play a role in that drive that lets you're success to be the CEO of one 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. And he mentioned to me about all this adversity and he said, all right, I said to him, I said, do you think part of your success is because you had bad stuff happen? And 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 I think there's probably wisdom for mentorship there or whether your parent or a mentor That easy times don't result in growth Yeah, I've heard a lot of my friends and they they worry that some Jews my kids have not ever had bad times Yeah, and so what And so what happens here? So I don't know, is it required? And why you end up not required, but it sure doesn't hurt.

You had this good line about advice you were given that growth and comfort never coexist. Growth and comfort never coexist. And you have to get used to that thought. If someone said that they think of me like one of the more profound lessons I had, and that I really is, it's from my husband, and which is even more funny, actually.

You could just steal it. I mean, you don't have to give up. Oh, I have, I have shamelessly. 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

fellow I work for is going to get a new job. It's going to get promoted. It 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. It looked at me. He says, I think you should go to the interview. I went to interview interview the next day. Bob, blah, blah. Guy says to me, looks at me and he says, I want to offer you that job. And I said, I would like to think about it. I said, why don't go home and talk to my husband about it.

Kind of 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, et cetera. And he says, do you think a man would have answered, et cetera. And he says, do you think a man would have answered it that way? And I said,

he says, I know you. He's like, six months, you're gonna be bored. And all you can think of is what you don't know. And he said, I know these other people, you have way more skill than them, and they think they could do it. And he's like, wow, why? And for me, it internalizes feeling that, and I'm going to say something as a stereotype that it resonates

with many, many women. And I'll ask you if it does after is that, I think that there's most harsh critic over 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. So 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 never do that again.

And I said, I understand. Because it was okay to be uncomfortable. I didn't have to use that. I mean, 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 100%.

No, I'm still terrified. No, you're not. But then you're, you're mean, you're learning something, right? Holding it together. So what I also mean matters. I think it's interesting. The maybe you could speak to that, the sort of the self critical thing inside your inside your brain. Because I think sometimes it's talked about that women have that. but I have that, definitely. And I think that's not just solely a property of women in the workplace. But I also want to sort of push back an idea that that's a bad thing that you should silence,

because I think that anxiety, at least to growth also, that's like this discomfort. So there's this weird balance you have to have between that self-critical engine and confidence. Yeah, I think that's a good point. You have to kind of dance because if you're super confident, people will value you higher, that's important. But if you're way too confident, maybe in the short term you'll gain, but in the long term you won't grow.

Very good point. So I can't really disagree with that. And to me, even when I took on jobs, I always felt people say, well, is it what point are you confident enough? And I came to sort of believe, again, a theme of what my beliefs that, if I was willing to ask lots of questions and understood enough, that's all I needed to know.

Let me ask you about your husband a little bit. Is it, see you right in the book. You're right in the book. He's just jumping around, and like I said, I'm a bit of a romantic. So how did you meet your husband? 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. When I interviewed, I actually got this scholarship. I mean, without it, I'd graduated with hundreds of thousands out of dollars a debt. So part of that was in the summer, I had to work in Detroit.

I lived a little room by a cement plant, not theirs, but I mean, that's all I could afford. It's very romantic. It's very, very romantic. And the person who owned the house said, 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. It is how we very first. And then it was over. It was. It was. It was. It was. It was written. Yep. Let's if it's okay. Just zoom out to you mentioned power and good power a few times. So if

you can just even talk about it. Your book is called Good Power, Leading Positive Change in our lives, Work in the World. What is good power? What's the essence of good power? 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 positive way. I would also tell you, I hope one day I'm 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, 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 and not divides them. It's 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 Paralization, I mean it's something happens in there versus no no no I can If don't worry about getting to that actual exact endpoint if I 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 memory with purpose. I'm 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 like scientific description of this. They want the stories and 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 were 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 co-chair an organization called 110. So that essence of navigate tensions, do it respectfully, celebrate progress, and give me, it does me one more minute. These sort of again, it's retrospect that I, I didn't know this in the moment. I had to learn it. I learned it. I am blessed. A lot of people I worked with and around. But some of the principles, like the first one is, says, if you're 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 like I just have my knee replaced. And I interviewed all these doctors.

You can tell the difference of the guy who's 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. You're hard, where is good? I actually had some trouble. And I had a doctor who was like, you know, this doesn't sound right. I'm coming to you.

Like 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. Um, a waiter serves your food. Okay, he serves his food. He did a job or did he carry 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. 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 will voluntarily believe in a new future or some alternate reality. And you will use your discretionary energy versus me ordering you. You'll get so much more done. Then the third, change in indoor. 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 gotta do. And in fact, pick up today's any newspaper, right? Chat GPT, you're an AI guy. All right, I believe one of the tenants of good tech is, it's like responsibility for the long term.

And it says, so if you're gonna 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 list one day. On the other side, it can break encryption. That's bad thing.

So we work equally hard on all the algorithms that would sustain quantum. I think with chat, okay, great. There's equal in 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 to do your homework, that is not the idea of homework as someone who like to study hard, but anyways, you get my point. It's just the upside

and the downside. And that there could be much larger implications that are much more difficult to predict than it's our responsibility to really work hard to figure that out. Yeah, I was talking AI ethics a decade ago, and I'm like, why won't anybody listen to us? You know, it's, that's another one of those values things that you realize, hey, if I'm gonna bring technology in the world, I better bring it safely. Right. And that to me comes with, when you're an older company

that's been around, you realize that society gave you a licensed outbreak 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 gonna bring in, it's 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 a 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. But it started with the power of we, and there's that big leap, I think that propagates through the things you're saying, which is the leap from focusing on yourself to the focusing on others, so that having that empathy, you've said, at some point in our lives and careers, our attention turns from ourselves to others. We still have our own goals, but we recognize that our actions affect many, that it is impossible to achieve anything truly meaningful alone. So it's, do you, I think, maybe you can correct me, but ultimate good powers about collaboration and maybe, you know, in a large conference, like delegation on great teams.

The ultimate good power is actually doing something for society. That would be my ultimate definition of car by the way. So it's about the results of the thing. Yeah, but how it's done, right? The how it's done. And so, you know, when you set a leap, do you think you 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 point? I think the leap is in deciding that this is a, it's like deciding that you will care about others. That this is, it's like a leap of going to the gym for the first time. It's yes, it takes a long time to develop that and to actually care, but the decision that I'm going to actually care about other human beings, yeah. Yeah.

Or at least, like, yeah, it just feels like a deliberate action. You take a empathy. Yeah, because sometimes I think it happens a little, it's maybe not as deliberate. Yeah, it's a little bit more gradual because it might happen because you realize that geez, I can't get this done alone. So I gotta have other people with me. Well, how do I get them to help me do something?

So I think it does help happen 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, you know, 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, me, power of me, you know, I'm thinking I give this great speech,

financial services, this guy walks up to me after I think he's gonna like ask me some great question, and he said to me, I wish my daughter could have been here. And in that moment, and I, 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. I am, I just want to be recognized for my work. But 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 wanna 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'll say you cannot be what you cannot see. And I said myself, well, wait a second. Okay. I am in these positions. I have a responsibility to, and it's two others.

And that's what I mean. I felt like it can be somewhat gradual that you come and you may 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 You're one of the most powerful tech leaders ever And as you mentioned the word power, you know the old saying goes power corrupts and absolute power corrupts Absolutely was there an aspect of power that was That you had to resist its ability to corrupt your mind to sort of delete you into thinking you're smarter than you are that kind of all the ways that's very dangerous. I agree with I mean I think you've 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, doesn't mean, you know, but that we're sick of fans. You cannot have that, right? I mean, it's like, I would say to someone like, um, he listened to me tell me, tell me what would make me better or do something or I have a husband that'll do that for me quite easily, by the way. You know, he's dumb. He's the one who kind of do this and quit a simple fact.

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 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 a great way. And she was one of the few people that would tell me the truth. And you know, sometimes I'm like, I'm not already.. She'd be like, do not roll your eyes at this. You absolutely have got to have that. I think it also comes, it'll go back to my complete commitment to

inclusion and diversity because you've got to have that variety around you. You'll get a better product and a better answer at the end of the day. to resist that allure, I think it's around who you surround yourself with. I, uh, current politics would say that too. So you, uh, you write about, and in general, you value diversity a lot. So can you speak to almost like philosophical, what does diversity mean to you? Diversity to me means I'm going to get a better product, a better answer. I value different views and so it's inclusion. I always say inclusion, diversity is a number, inclusion is a choice. You can make that choice every single day. That's a good one.

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 the diversity is a good thing? Yeah, but I believe that diversity, like broadly, I very broadly define it. Yeah, so like there's, you know, sometimes the way diversies look that with the way diversies use today is like surface level characteristics Which are also important but they're usually reflective of something else Which is a diversity of background a diversity of thought a diversity of struggle

Some people that to go up middle class versus a poor Different countries different motivations all of that. Yeah poor, different countries, different motivations, all of that, yeah, it's beautiful and different people from very different walks of life get together. Yeah, it's beautiful to see. Well, like sometimes it's very difficult to get at that on a sheet of paper of the characteristics that defines the diversity.

I know, so it is. And it's just like, oh, I can't hire exactly for a roof. Yeah. 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. You have to open up, you just, you got to really open up new pools. Yeah. You have to think, like everybody, you don't have to have a PhD. Just like you said, yeah, sorry to say it. I know it's very valuable, but you have trust me, but, well, it could, it could, just like you said, it could even be a negative.

So you mentioned, like for good power, you are a CEO for a long time of a public company. Where there are times when there was pressure to sacrifice what is good for the world, for the bottom line, you know, to do Yeah, there were a lot of times for that. I mean, I think every company faces that today and 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,

that when I participated in the business roundtable wrote up a new purpose statement that had multiple stakeholders, I think it's common sense. Like if you're going to be a hundred years old, you only get there because you actually do at some time balance all these different stakeholders and 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, you would well remember your student of history, IBM was one of the originators of the semiconductor industry, and certainly certainly 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 a fight a war on cloud and AI and so okay now shareholders would say, fine, shut it down. Okay, those chips also power some of the most important systems that power these 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 wasn't, 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. It was a very integrated process of research development and manufacturing, and you'd also, you'd be perfecting things in manufacturing. And it's, these were our very high performance chips. 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. It's a, I think is a great example of the question you just asked because people would have applauded. Others would have been, this was horrible.

Or we 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 as a million of these decisions, I think most people, they're 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? Well, what is that partnership like with the class because you work with gigantic businesses. And what's it like, sort of, really forming a great relationship with them, understanding what their needs are, being in service of their needs? In service of, yeah, very simple. I'll know your promises. And that happens over time.

I mean, in service of, you know, 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 the time, in this is still true about views about technology and national technology giants and global ones and pros and the cons and countries want their own national champions quite obvious. I mean if I'm for answer 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. I had met her many times. She very well prepared, very well prepared every time. You would know. And I started explaining all these things about why how, you know, how we don't share data, how 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 asked to act to 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 and you do what you say and you act with values over a long period of time. And that to me, people say we're valued. 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. Why we do what we do and why some things are tolerable and something. You know, what should fundamental beliefs are? And many people sort of zoom past that stage, right?

It's okay for a while. And then never sacrifice that. If you would never sacrifice that, I don't think you can. So there was a lot of pressure when you took over a CEO, and there was 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline between 2012 and the summer of 2017. So it was a stressful time, maybe not, maybe you can correct me on that. So as a CEO, what was it like going through that time with

the decisions, the tensions in terms of investing versus making a profit? I always felt that that sense of urgency was so high, even if I was calm on the outside, because you have One 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 I have ever had to undertake.

Yes. At a board that understood that, in fact, some people, some of the headlines were like, this is existential, right? I mean, nobody gives you a 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 now, but you're big. And it's like changing what's handled saying, can I change the wheels while the trains running or something like that or the engines while the planes flying? Exactly. And that's what you have to do. And that took time. And so, you know, let's do I wish it would have been faster, absolutely.

But the team worked so hard. And in that frame, 50% of the portfolio was changed. It's a very large company. If you would also divest it, $10 billion of businesses. 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, anti-dissing, does that make you mad when they talk mean? Yeah. And I just looked at him and I said, you know, he says, 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, a great conviction, I knew it was the right thing. I knew it would be needed for IBM to live at second century

And so and my successor they have picked up gone for 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 We did a lot of work with Red Hat back in 2017. Oh, we'd always done a lot of work with them. Actually, we were one of the first investors when they were first formed. But that was 2018. We took quite a hit for even, you know, 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. So I had to take short-term hit for that.

Short-term hit for a 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 what's the right thing to do. You just keep going, right? So the team had the vision, they had the belief and everything else, the criticism. So we didn't always have exactly the right,

you know, if 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. Could you maybe just on a small tangent educate me a little bit. So right had originally is Linux open source distribution Linux, but it's also consulting. Well, it's a little bit of consulting, but it's mostly software. District is mostly Linux. It was mostly software. Yeah. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So, but today, IBM is very much, there's, you know, most IT services in the world is done by IBM. There's so many, so many varied, so basically if you have issues, problems to solve in business in the software space, IBM can help. 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 Kindro, 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, 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 in some hardware, obviously still the mainframe is modernized, alive, and kicking, and still running some of the most important things of 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 of that software portfolio. They had some services with them for implementation, but it wasn't a very large part.

It's grown by leaps and bounds. Because originally, the belief was everything was going to go to the public cloud. At least many people thought that way. We didn't. In fact, we tried. We were cured of public cloud company. We really tried to work it, but what we found was a lot of the mission critical work. It was tuned for consumer world.

It wasn't tuned for the enterprise. So then time has elapsing here though, and you gotta be of scale. And we didn't have any application, remember, we're not an 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 look 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 will 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 and be secure. And that's what took us down the path with Red Hat, that belief. The structure of that is fundamentally different than something that's consumer facing.

So the less you learn there as you can't just reuse something that's optimized for consumers. Yeah, 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. Sure. Because it got to be simple, consumable, all the things we talked about already. Plus, you have to have the relationships with the enterprise. They have to it got to be simple, consumable, all the things we talked about already.

Plus, you have to have the relationships with enterprise. It's a built-in. Yeah, very different. You know our history. At one time, we had the PC business. The short answer to why 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, you know, technology business. Yeah, but what is now Lenovo, I guess that's what's just been. Lenovo acquired it. It's extremely good at that. So, but not as good as you're saying is an enterprise. It's not, it was a great idea. Lenovo's very good at their PC world, yes.

But I wouldn't, and they can sell into the enterprise. Yeah, right. But you as a consumer can go by a Lenovo too. So look at look in China, right? Look in other places. So that's what I mean by consumer, you know, 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? Was that a difficult decision? Do you remember? This is a long time ago now. It's like 2005. Yeah. as well, what does IBM do, right? Was that a difficult decision? Do you remember? This is a long time ago now, it's like 2005. So they're all difficult because it's not only things

as 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, originally, as IBM PC, then the IBM clones, they even 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. But because of that, it's not as public facing, even though it's one of the most rugged

guys below goes ever. Yeah, isn't it? 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 cash register. As an example, you'd walk into a store, actually, they're still in places. That went to Toshiba. Can you speak to consulting a little bit? What is that entailed to train up, to hire a workforce that can be of service to all kinds of different problems in the software space, in the tech space?

What's entailed in that? I mean, 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. Maybe you can educate me. I think consulting is a kind of you roll in and you try to solve problems that businesses have like with expertise, right?

Okay, is that the process of consulting? somewhat right so there that you okay so fair enough when you say that we're consulting It's a really broad spectrum. I mean, I think people could be sitting here thinking it does any, it could be, I just give advice and I leave to 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 have the technology to go to the implementation and see them through and at the time back then that's what you know there've been five of those that it 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 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. Yeah, the seed all the way through. Yes. So let me say almost like a personal question. So that was a big thing you were a part of, that you led in 2002, that you championed

and helped, I should say, negotiate the purchase of Monday, the consulting arm of Pricewaterhouse Cooper for $3.5 billion. So what were some of the challenges of that, do you remember? Personal and business? 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 it 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, you know, kind of balancing which way would they go IPO or acquisition? And so, the challenges are obvious in part of it's why they went with us as an acquisition. So, you know, kind of balancing which way would they go IPO or acquisition. And so the challenges are obvious in 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, you know, we asked somebody how long you've been with IBM and the person answered 143 quarters. 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 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, you had that they were going to be private and they had or public and they had always been private their whole life. And then you had the business model. So in the others, it all failed that had tried to do this. So yeah, it was a, it was, it was a tough thing to do. What about the personal side of that? That was a big leap step up for you.

You've been IBM for a long time. Yeah. This is, this is a big sort of leadership, like very impactful, large-scale leadership decisions. What was that like? So, unlike in my career earlier where I said I was changing jobs, I said I wasn't comfortable, etc. 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

which you know how to do like you have some good strengths the coworker the other part of me said boy, this is a really high profile and I felt and I can remember saying to someone like this is going to kill me or catapult probably nothing in between and that was in terrifying too that was okay you okay with that. I was okay with that because I felt I knew enough, you know, like these things I had written. 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 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 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 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 wouldn't call it terrifying, but make no mistake, like it was very hard. And it turned out to be extremely successful.

By the time we ended, it was worth 19, well time, I stepped, I ran it for, oh goodness gracious, quite a long time. I'm gonna say seven or eight, nine years. And Uber, 19 and a half billion dollars, 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 what happened, but they happened so much faster. It'd be things like clients would say, oh, IBM cares about a quarter.

So let's negotiate every quarter on these prices. And, you know, when they were private, they didn't have these issues. Well, that had an impact on margins really fast. And so that ability... So you picked up a lot of challenges. 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 in 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. So 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, have you don't really believe in something, you really aren't gonna 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 undoing, so, but when then it turned. And I can remember the day that we started really getting the business to home and start to, it was almost like, finally, and I gave the team this little plaque, this little, I was kind of, finally, and I gave the team this little plaque, this little, it was kind of corny, paperweight thing. And I'm, 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. Yes. And it's so true. I mean, there was also a governor of Texas, who's passed, but she had said, someone said, what's the secret of your success? And she said, it's passion, in person of variance, whenever one else would have given up. And I feel that's what that taught me. That taught me, like, you know,

no matter how bad this gets, you are not giving up. And this, now you can't keep doing the same thing, like the doctor, this hurts, oh, then stop doing it. You can't keep doing the same thing. We had to keep changing till we found our right way to get the model to work, right? And client work, we never, never had an issue and kept so many of the people. And now we are 25 years almost later. And a number of them run parts of the IBM business still today. So it's that old Maya Angelou saying when you say, what do I remember? They'll say, you won't remember

the specifics of this, but you'll remember how you felt. And that's kind of how I feel. And I think they do too. The whole team does of that. Like I'll get an anniversary note still on that. You know, when you've been through something like that together with people. So during the acquisition, the way you knew that people, it's the right team, are the ones that believe that this consulting can grow, can integrate with the IBM and all that. Yeah, I was lucky. Look, I did things that helped that. I mean, I knew that people joining us would feel more comfortable if they had people leading

it that they recognized, etc. But again, I learned those that didn't then. I eventually had to take some action out. But PWCC had a lot of really dedicated leaders to it. And I give them a lot of credit. What's amazing to see a thing that kind of started that very stressful time and then it turns out to be a success. Yeah.

That's just beautiful to see. So what about the acquisition itself? Is there something interesting to say about the, like, what you learn about maybe negotiation? Because there's a lot of money involved too. To me, it was a win-win and we both actually cared the customers got value. So there was this like third thing that had it benefit, not them, not there was this third thing. And then next to that, people would have the wisdom of what it takes to have great negotiation. But yeah, so so win win is one of the ways you can have. But it's like obvious to even say that, right? I mean, if you

can back to being in service of something, we were both in service of clients. So in and then, you know, I always say, when you have an negotiation with someone, okay, both parties always kind of walk away a little bit. Okay, that's good. If they both walk away going, yeah, I should have got a little bit more. Okay, but it's okay if I have to. Okay, they're both a little fussy. When one walks away and thinks they did great and the other one did horrible, they usually is like born bad.

I mean, because they usually is like born bad. I mean, because they never worked that way. I've always felt that way with negotiations that you push too far down. You will usually be sorry you did that, you know? So don't push too far. I mean, that's ultimately what collaboration and empathy means is you're interested in long-term success of everybody together versus like your Short-term. And then you get the discretionary energy from versus like, okay, you you screwed me here. I'm done, right? So let's even rewind even back

Oh, no, so I do feel like this is an nostalgia interview. Oh, no, let me just ask the romantic question What is you love most about engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, some of those early days from your degree to the early work of the day? I love that logic part of it, right? And you do get a sense of completion at some point when you reach certain milestones that, you know, like yes, it worked, or yes, it, you know, that finite answer to that. So that's what I love about it. I love the problem-solving of it. Computing, what finite answer to that. So that's what I loved about it. I loved it, the problem

solving of it. Computing, what led you down that path? What, competing in general, what made you fall in love with computing, with engineering? It's probably that back to that desire, why don't you know how things work, right? And so that's like a natural thing, you know, math. I loved math for that reason. I always wanted to study how did that, you know, how did it get that to work, kind of thing. So it goes back in that time. But I did start when I started in the first one. I wasn't, I was already in the engineering school, but my first thought was to be a doctor, that that was far more noble, that I should be a medical doctor, until I could not pass human reproduction as a course. And I thought that I, Rene, that I could not, I'm like, I got all these color pencils. I got these pictures. This is not working out for me. I'm gonna stick to math.

It was the only course in my four-year college education I had to take pass-failing, because otherwise, I risked, you know, impairing my grade point every day. Engineering it is. So, but after about 10 years, you jumped from the technical road off systems engineer to a management, a leadership role. Did you miss at that time the sort of technical direct contribution versus being a management, a leadership role, did you miss at that time the sort of

the technical direct contribution versus being a leader, a manager? That's an interesting point. Like I always been sort of a doer leader, you know, so you never lost it. I never really did. Even, you know, and I think this is really important for today. The best way people learn is experientially, I think. Now, you may, that's being a generalization because there are people who can learn all different ways, right? So, I've done things like with my whole team. They all had to learn how to build cloud applications.

I'm called a code off. And so, you know, I don't care what your job is, right code, you know? And I remember when we were trying to get the company to understand AI, we did something called a cognitive jam. OK, there's a reason we picked the word cognitive, by the way, instead of AI. Today we used the word AI. It was really symbolic.

It was to mean this is to help you think, not replace your thinking. There was so much in the zeitgeist about AI being a bad thing at that time. So that was why we picked a mouthful of a word like cognitive. And it was like, no, no, this is to help you actually. So do what, you know, do what you do better or do something you haven't yet learned. And we did something called the cognitive jam. But the whole point was everybody in the company could volunteer get on a team. You either had a build something that improved one of our products or did something for a client or did a social, self-dissocial issue with AI. And again, this goes back now

10 years and people did things from bullying applications to, you know, railroads stuff to whatever it was, but it got like 100,000 people to understand, you know, viscerally, what is AI? So that's a long answer to my belief around experiential and so do you ever give it up? I don't think so, because I actually think that's pretty good to get your hands dirty in something. And you can't do it, you know, depending what you're doing, your effort to do that will be less.

But. So even a CEO, you try to always hit your hands. Dirty little bit. Shout GPT, I've played and you still I'm not saying I'm any good at any of it. You know anymore, but to build up intuition Yeah, it's that really understand right and I'll be afraid of yeah Like I we mentioned at the beginning I B.M. Research has helped catalyze some of the biggest accomplishments in computing and artificial intelligence history

so D blue, IBM D blue versus Caspar of chess match in 96 and 97. Just just to ask kind of like what your perception is what your memory is of it. What is what is that moment? Like this seminal moment, I believe probably one of the greatest moments in AI history when the machine first beat a human at a thing they humans thought of. You make a very interesting point, because it is like one of the first demonstrations of using a game to bring something

to people's consciousness, right? And to this day people use games to demonstrate different things. But at the time, it's funny. I didn't necessarily think of it so much as AI and I'll tell you why. I was, and I'm not a chess player. You might be a chess player, so I'm not expert at it.

But I think I understand properly of chess that chess has got a finite number of moves it can be made. Therefore, if it's finite, really what's the demonstration of a supercomputing, right? It's about the amount of time and how fast it can crunch through to find the right move. So in some ways, I thought of it as almost a

bigger demonstration of that, but it is absolutely as you said, it is was a motivator one of the big milestones of AI because it put in your consciousness that it's man in this in this other machine, right? Yeah, I mean, doing something. So you saw it as just a challenge, a competition problem, and this is a way to demonstrate hardware and software computation as best. Yes, I did. But the thing is, there is a romantic notion that chess is the embodiment of human intellect. I mean, intelligence that you can't build a machine that can beat chess champion and chess. And the fact that it did. I was blessed by not being a chess expert.

So it's just a competition problem. It's a competition problem. It's a cavitation problem to me. Well, that's probably required to not be paralyzed by the immensity of the task. So that this is just solvable. But it was a very, very, I think that was a powerful moment. So speaking just as an AI person, that was a. That reinvigorated the dream. You were a little kid back then though, right? At that age of 95, you have to be like, were you a member of it actually at the moment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What did you think at the moment about it?

It was awe-inspiring because, especially sort of growing up in the Soviet Union, you think especially of Kyrgyzstan Sprov and Ch, especially of Caracas-Brave and chess. Like, your intuition is weak about those things. I didn't see it as computation. I thought of it as intelligence because chess for a human being doesn't feel like computation. It feels like some complicated relationship between memory and patterns and intuition and guts and instinct and all of those like some-

You watch someone play that's what we conclude, right? So to see a machine be able to be a human, I mean you get a little bit of that with Chagy Petino. It's like language was to us humans, the thing that we kind of, uh, surely the, the poetry of language is something only humans can really have. It's, it's going to be very difficult to replicate the magic of a natural language without deeply understanding language. But it seems like Chad G.P.T. is can do some incredible things with language and in natural language dialogue. But that was the first moment in AI.

Through all the AI winters from the 60s of the promise of the, it was, wow, this is possible for a simple set of algorithms to accomplish something that we think of as intelligence. So that was truly inspiring that maybe intelligence Maybe the human mind is just algorithms. That was the thought at the time and of course now What the funny thing what happens is the moment you accomplish it everyone says I was just brute force algorithms. It's silly And this continues at every single time you pass a benchmark a threshold that win a game You can use every single time you pass a benchmark, a threshold, a win a game, people say, oh, well, it's just this. It's just this.

And that, I think that's funny. And there's going to be a moment when we're going to have to contend with AI systems that exhibit human-like emotions and feelings. And you have to start to have some difficult discussions about how to treat those beings and what role do they have in society, what are the rules around that? And this is really exciting because that also puts a mirror to ourselves to see, okay, what's the right way to treat each other's human beings?

Because it's a good test for that. It is because I always say it's a reflection of humanity. I mean, it's taught by what man, you know, that stuff in the past, you'll teach it bad stuff for the future. And which is why I think, you know, like efforts to regulate it are a fool's ear and you need to regulate uses not, you know, because not the technology itself is not inherently good or bad, but how it's used or taught can be good or bad for sure, right?

And so that's, to me, will unveil now a whole different way of having to look at technology. What about another magical leap with the early days of Watson with beating the jeopardy challenge? What was your experience like with Watson? What's your vision for Watson in general? What was it? And it was really inspired by first chest, right? And cast broth and then you come forward in general. It was really inspired by first chest, right? And cast broth, and then you come forward in time.

And I think what Watson did, because you used a really important word, AI had waxed and waned in these winners, right? In and out, in and out, popular or not, more money, less money, in and out, confidence and no confidence. And so I think that was one of the first times it brought to the forefront of people like, whoa, like it humanized it. Because here it is playing against these two gentleman. And as it did lose it first, you know, and then finally, finally won at the end of the day. And what it was doing is making you say, hey, natural language is actually understanding

natural language. It's one of the first demonstrations of natural language support. And bit of reasoning over lots of data, right? And so that it could have access to a lot of things come up with a conclusion on it. And to me, that was a really big moment. And I do think it brought to the conscious of the public. And in good ways and bad, because it's probably set expectations very high of like, whoa, what this could be. But and I still do believe that it has got the ability to change and help us man make better

decisions that so many decisions are not optimal in this world. You know, even medical decisions. And it's right or wrong what took us down a path of healthcare first with our AI. And in we took many pivots and I think there's a really valuable lesson in what we learned. One is that I actually don't think the challenges are the technology. Yes, those are challenges, but the challenges are the people challenges around this, right? So do people trust it? How will they use it?

I mean, I saw that straight up with the doctors and like, meaning they're so busy in the way they've been taught to do something. Do they have time to learn another way? I saw it was a mistake when you put it on top of processes that didn't change kind of like, paving a cow path. Didn't work. I mean, it was all human change management around it that really its biggest challenges. human change management around it that really it's biggest challenges. And another valuable lesson, we picked back to you said you think of IBM as moonchaps, we picked really hard problems to start with. I think you see a lot of technology now starts with really simple problems. And by that it probably starts to build trust because I start little. It's like, oh, I'm not ready to, you know, outsource my diagnosis to you, but I'll get some

information here about a test question. So very different thinking. So a lot of things to learn, we were making a market at the time. And when you make a market, you know, choice of problem you work on gets to be very important. When you're catching up, well, then it's a scale game. So very different thing. And so, but Watson proved, I think, I mean, I hope I'm not being too, I think Watson brought AI back out of winner for the world. And that since then, there's just been, you know, one company after another and innovations and people working on it. And I've never graced of anything that we did. We learned so much. And we probably rebuilt it many times over. It made it more modular. And today, TABM, a Watson is more about AI inside of a lot of things, if you think of it

that way, which is more like an ingredient versus it's a thing in and of itself. And I think that's how it'll bring it through value. You know, more as an ingredient, and it's so badly needed, and even back then, the issue was so much data, like, what do you ever do it? You can't get through it. You can't use it for anything. You know this well. It's your profession. So, um, we have to have it. So that's a, that's going to propel it forward.

So it's part of the suite of tools that you use when you go to enterprise and you try to solve. Yeah. So AI for security, AI and automated operations, AI in your robotics, AI on your factory. You know, I mean, it's, it's all part of. And I think, and that's why even to the state, thousands, I mean thousands and thousands of clients of IBM still have the Watson components that it's the AI being used. So it became a platform, is how I would say it, right?

And an ingredient that went inside and consultants like you said had to learn, I had to, they had to learn. Don't just put it on something. You got to rethink how that thing should work because with the AI, it could work entirely differently. And so I also felt it could open up and still will open up jobs to a lot of people because more like an assistant.

And it could help me be qualified to do something. And we, even years ago saw this with the French banks, very unionized, but that idea that you could, in this case, the unions voted for it because it felt people did a better job. And so, and that's as part of about being really dedicated to help at help humanity, not destroy it.

Speaking of which, a funny side note, so Kubrick's, that 2000 was based months, been sad to see, uh, what do you think about, you know, the fact that how 9,000 was named after IBM? I really don't think it was. I know. I really don't have. I can be more fake news. It's more fake news. I have done, I've like researched this, tried to find any evidence and people have talked to, you know, was it really, you know, one letter, it was one letter off. So, for people that know, H is one letter off of I and one letter of B and then L is one letter off of that was the I think that's a solution found afterwards you know that's but here's what I think it more was I do think it's one of the

early demonstrations of evil AI yeah like can be taught bad I could push back on that because it's presented as evil in the movie because it hurts the AI hurts people. But it's a really interesting ethical question because the role of Hal 9000 is to carry out a successful mission. And so the question that is a human question, it's not an AI question at what price? You humans wage war.

They pay very heavy costs for a vision, for a goal of future that creates a better world. So that's the question certainly in space. Doctors ask that question all the time. I do limited resources who do I allocate my time and money and efforts? I agree. I've spent a decade talking about this question of AI ethics, right? And that that it needs really considerable not just attention, because otherwise it will mirror everything we love and everything we don't love. And again, and that's in beauty

in the eye of a holder, right? Depending your culture and everything else, with what you're doing and what you're going to do, how do you think about it? Do you think about the AI you're doing what you're going to do how do you think about it do you think about the AI you're going to develop is having guard rails dictated by some of your beliefs or Yeah, for sure so there's there's so many interesting ways to do this the right way and I don't think anyone has an answer My I tend to believe that transparency is really important. Yeah, so I think some aspect of your work should be open source or at least have an open source competitive that creates kind of forcing function for transparency of how you do things. So the other is I tend to believe maybe it's because of the podcast and I've just talked a lot of people. You should know the people involved. I agree 100%. As opposed to hide behind a company wall.

Sometimes there's a pressure. You have a PR team. You have to care for investors and discussions. So on, let's protect. Let's surely not tweet. Not with, like, in form this bubble, where you have incredible engineers doing fascinating work and also doing work that's difficult, complex human questions being answered.

And we don't know about any of them as a society. And so we can't really have that conversation. Even though that conversation would be great for hiring, it would be great for revealing the complexities of what the company is facing. So when the company makes mistakes, you understand that it wasn't malevolence or half-assadness and the decision making is just a really hard problem. And so I think transparency is just good for everybody. And I mean, in general, just having a lot of public conversations about this is a serious stuff that AI will have a

transformative impact on our society and it might do so very, very quickly. Through all kinds of ways we're not expecting, which is social media recommendation systems, they at scale have impact on the way we think, on the way we consume news, the our growth, like the kind of stuff we consume to grow and learn and become better human beings, all of that,

that's all AI. And then obviously the tools that run companies in which we depend, the infrastructure in which we depend. We need to know all about those AI decisions. And it's not as simple as, well, we don't want the AI to say these specific set of bad things. It's unfortunately I don't believe it's possible to prevent evil or bad things by creating a set of cold mathematical rules. Yeah. And so she's all fuzzy in gray areas. It's all giant mess. It is, I mean, you think about it like a knife. A knife can do good and a knife can do bad. Okay, you can't, it's very hard. You can't ban knives. You can't ban knives. And that this is, I think back, it was Friday, 20, I don't know, 15, 16. We did principles of trust and transparency. Notice the word transparency. That belief that with AI, it should be explainable. You should know who taught

it. You should know the data that went into training it. You should know who was, how it was written. If it's being used, you have a right to know these things. And I think those are pretty to this day, really powerful principles to be followed, right? And part of it, we ended up writing, because here we were when we were working on particularly healthcare. Like, okay, you care who trained it in what?

And where did it, and that's sort of, you know, that comes to your mind, and you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense for something important like that. But it's just in general, people won't trust the technologies. I don't think unless they have transparency into those things in the end, they won't really trust it. I think a lot of people would like to know, sort of, because a lot of us, I certainly do suffer from imposter syndrome, that self-critical brain. So, you know, taking that big step into leadership, did you, did you, a time suffer from imposter syndrome, like, how did I get here? Do I really belong here? Or did you, were you able to summon the courage and sort of the confidence to really step up? I think that's very natural for someone like no matter like the bigger the job gets.

You turn and you look to the left and the right and you see people around you and you think, what am I doing here? But then you remember what you do and there's no one else doing it. And so you get that confidence. So I do hear a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome, right? And I kind of actually this past year, I've spent some time helping people on that topic. And part of the story, you have to believe you, you, you, you have a right to be like anyone else does if you've prepared for that moment, you know. And so it's a bit more of a, I know it's hard to say

like a confidence thing more than anything else. So yes, there are times I look around, but then I think, wow, I'm in a position to make something change. So I can't say I have ever really dwelled on that feeling for long. Okay, so you just focus on the work, I have an opportunity, I'm gonna talk to you.

You know, it's good or bad, I just focus on the work. Yeah, good or bad. Yeah. One important lesson you said you learned from your mom is never let anyone else define you only you define who you are. So what's the trajectory, let's say of your self-definition journey of you discovering who you are from having that very difficult upbringing. You know, they say pivotal moments happen and you don't realize it when they're happening. So most of my, I feel like most of myself discovery, it's been like something happens in a year or two or some number later, I look back on it and

say, you know, I learned this from that. It's like not in the moment always with me. That could just be how I am. So I feel like it's been, know yourself is a good thing, right? I've actually heard you say that on a different podcast when you ask people questions, you're like, well, it depends, you know, like know yourself a bit, right? And, it's hard to know who you are though.

There's a lot of things like you said, like, like for me, there's, there's moods when you're super self-critical sometimes you're super confident and there's many it sometimes you're Emotional sometimes you're cool under pressure and although those all those are the same human being. Yeah, and I think that's fine Self-awareness that's different Was there societal expectations and norms are gender, the default in your career? You've spoken to that a little bit, but was there some aspect of that that was constraining and powering, or both? You know, I chose to never look at it.

Okay. Now, whether that is right or wrong, and again, I'm a product of the 70s and 70s and the 80s where I think I was surrounded all the other women around me viewed our way to get ahead with just a work card, work hard, work hard. And that was the way you differentiated yourself. And that's obviously it did help. I mean, there's no doubt about it. You're always, you know, you learned a lot of things, which qualified opened up another door, opened up another door. I'm very mindful that I have

worked for companies that are very steeped in those values of equal opportunity. And so nothing remarkable about that. And I mean, when I was a wee kid, I'm taught higher a diverse team. I get evaluated for it. I get evaluated if my team is built up their skills. So this is that, you know, when you're really formative, you're in a culture that that's what it's valuing, right? So it becomes part of you.

So I say sometimes to chagrin did I ever feel I was held back for that reason. Now, were there plenty of times when, you know, I write about a few stories in the book, I'm laying cables at night and the guys are at the bar. Now, I didn't really wanna go with them to the bar anyways. They'll be like, we'll be back to get you, you know, bye. And I'm like, okay, I mean, I learned a lot. So it didn't. Now, all that said, back to my earlier

story about being a role model, you know, it would be foolish, not believe that there were times that that mattered. And I would say two things, even not that long ago. You know, a colleague called me and I was talking about media and about women CEOs and said, do you notice that sometimes when it's women's CEO, they call the person by name. And when it's a man, they call the company out, not the person's name exactly associated with the issue.

And I said, yeah, well, I think you have to just understand much of what you do. It will be magnified because there are so few of you. And sometimes it will be, you know, really can be blown out of proportion, right? And so that can happen. And you get to learn which in which way now all that said on gender, it is an interesting thing with the book, as I've talked to, you know, having a book, it is one of my best friends, the first rations, I can't wait for my daughter to read it. I say, well, that's interesting, do you think you could read it?

Huh. It's fascinating. It's an interesting reaction. And I hear I am 40 years later, that's an interesting reaction, right? And I say, no, the book, I really worked hard to write it for everyone. I just happened to be a reaction, right? And I say, no, the book, I really worked hard to write it for everyone. I just happened to be a woman, right? But there's still that there. And so,

look until I think people see and never feel that they have a, it doesn't even matter if there's a woman, could be another diverse group that feels it. It's okay to ask those questions. And that's why I actually, I'm okay talking about it because there were times I felt it, right? There were times in my life on my looks or my weight or my clothing or Endless numbers of things that people would comment on that they would not have commented on If it was someone else now on the other hand when there's so few of you and you know in

There's good and bad. I mean, there's benefit to that too, right? You if you do good work, you'll be recognized. And so a pronecon and I think, um, I've just, you know, grown up believing like my advice to young women going to engineering, not because you're going to be an engineer, it teaches you to solve problems and anything you job you do is going to be solving problems. Things like that are what I take away from that in that journey. It is interesting that I hear from women that even on this podcast when I talk to incredible women like yourself, it is inspiring to young women to hear it. You like to see, you talk to somebody from Turkey and then Turkish people

all get excited. It's just true. So you get like somebody that looks like you, somebody that and the category could be tiny, it can be, it can be huge. That's just the reality of the world. It is a reality of the world. And the work I do now to put this group called 110, put 1 million black employees into the middle class without college degrees get them the right skills upwardly mobile jobs. So one of my last years We had been working on it just did regular leadership session at IBM and had our black colleagues We're talking about what it to feel like to be a black leader and here. These are extremely accomplished people and I can remember very well

One telling a story about, look, I felt if I failed or succeeded, it's not just me. It came from a country in Africa. I felt like the whole country is on my shoulder, my successor failure. That's a burden. I mean, I don't feel that burden. Not true. As a woman CEO, I did feel like, you know, even the headlines when I was named said, you

know, her appointment will either, you know, her successor failure will be a statement for the whole gender kind of thing. And I didn't dwell on it, but I met that's, but I could see how people, like you said, it could be a small group, it could be whatever. And so that is a lot of pressure on people and they need role models. You are a role model for people. Look at what you're able to do. You do these podcasts.

You understand your science very well. You're very well prepared. Your ability to translate it to people. You know, that's not an insignificant thing. And you may say, oh, you know, is that about the power of me? Not really, right? And you obviously believe, you don't do this because you're just like sitting at a microphone. You do it because you think, okay, if I can get people to say things that are really valuable, though, the people they're going to learn something, I assume that is, I mean, you never told me though, the people that they're going to learn something, I assume that is, I mean, you never told me my interpretation is, that's why you do this podcast, that you feel like in service of other people that you can bring them something

unique by the way you do this. Now, I should ask you, why do you do it? That's my impression. By the way, can I just comment on the fact that you keep asking really hard questions? And I really, I appreciate that. I'm really honored by it. As a fan of podcast myself, what I hope is to talk to people like you and to show that you are a fascinating and beautiful human being outside of your actual accomplishments also. So sometimes people are very focused on,

you know, very specific things about like you said, science like what the actual work is, whether it's nuclear fusion or it's a JGPT. I just wanna show that it's, because I see it at MIT and everywhere. It's just human beings, trying their best, they're flawed, but just realizing that all of these very well accomplished people are all the same And then so then regular people and the young people that they're able to see you know, I can do this too

I can have a very big impact. Yeah, exactly. It's like we're all kind of Well, we're like trying to figure it out So let me just ask you about family you wrote that my family still jokes that the reason I never I'm not a boss. Well, we're like trying to figure it out. I was just afraid. You were certain to agree. So, let me just ask you about family. You wrote that my family still jokes that the reason I never had children on my own was because I had already raised my family. They're right. So, this is talking to you all bringing.

But in general, what was your leading a giant company? What was the right place to find work-life balance for you? To have time for family, have time for a way for work, and be successful. I had to learn that, and I might have said, you're the only one that can determine your own work-life balance. Companies are in eight things. They will take everything they can from you.

It's not a bad thing. They just will. As will bosses. You give it, we'll take it. And when people ask for, oh, I need room for, I'm like, okay, I had to come with terms with, the criminal was me if I needed that balance. I had to set those boundaries. And so, when I comment about a family, because I am in an extreme awe of people with children

who work, it is an extremely hard thing to do. I watch my siblings, I love my nieces and nephews and, whew, you know, a. The emotional, their pain is your pain every minute of a day and then you still have a job on top of it. And so when my mom had to go back to school and had to work, I was the one. And so when she couldn't go to the teacher meeting, I went to the teacher meeting when, and so in some ways, and there's an age gap between my brother and I and my other two sisters. And so I'm still, they still call me Mama Bear even. I mean, I'm extremely protective of all of them. And it is as if I had raised them. And my mom did a great job raising them. I didn't. I, but I was there. And so when it came time to have children,

and my husband came from a family where his father died and was raised by a single mother, very similar endpoint, different reasons why he ended up, you know, his father had not abandoned them. And I don't want people to believe to do my job, you can have no children. That is not right. I know other great women CEOs,

Marilyn Houston, her Ann Lackie Martin, extremely technical company, Mary Barrow, her runs General Motors, Ellen Coleman, her run Dupont. These are all my friends to this day.

And they've been fantastic mothers and husbands, good parents, right? And so I talk about it because it was a choice we made. And so, you know, we both felt, look, we'd reached a point where for his reasons, what he had to do, I'd already felt that way, and that we were comfortable just being great aunts and uncles. And I'm a great aunt.

You know, I like to think that for my little guys and I'll know that they're older now, but lots of them. And in there's no doubt though, the choices we made, Mark and I, that made it easier for me to focus on work. I mean, it's just math, you know, when you've got less people to have to take care of. And so I'm very considerate of that. And I think much of it informed many of the policies I put into because I had such great empathy for those who then still had these other responsibilities. And I desperately wanted them all to stay in the workforce. So I can remember, and my siblings have been more successful than I, by the way.

I mean, to my mother's credit. And my one sister who, you know, went to Northwestern, has an MBA, built some of the most sophisticated systems. She spent her whole career at Accenture and just recently retired as a chief executive of all of consulting. But at one point, she took off time to be to spend with her family and then went back to go back to work. She's talking to me and she's like, I don't know if I should go back to work. Maybe the life's, you know, technology goes so fast. It's been a few years. I'm sitting there like, what are you talking about?

I'm like, you know, look at her credentials. They're far outstanding. I'm like, and I thought to myself, like ding, one of those moments, if my own sister feels that way, with all her credentials, I'll bet I went back to work the next day and I said, Hey, pull for me. All the people who've left for parental reasons and or whatever family reasons, and didn't

come back. And it began a program of returnships. And I can't tell you how many in men and women was because they didn't feel confident to come back. They thought technology passed them by. Okay. We said, it's three months. You could stay one month, three months.

Doesn't matter. Well, a lot of people like one. You could stay one month three months. It doesn't matter Well a lot of people like one day. They're like you're right not that much happened I know it happened, but I caught up. I actually know more than I think you know and and I so Was a long answer to your question about I didn't but I am so empathetic and I am in awe of what they are able to do so And it made me then I think more empathetic to the policies and the like around that topic, so you could keep great people in the workforce. So you mentioned your friends with Mayor Barr,

the CEO of GM. I didn't mean to name drop. So I didn't get it that way. No, I love her. She's amazing. So I just wanted to, I'm just curious to you guys. I'll tell Mary, she should do your podcast. Well, we'll make it happen.

She's a great leader. I always, I tell Mary what I think of her is I think she's one of the most authentic leaders out there, most authentic. I mean, she's just very different companies, huge challenges. I work there first, I remember. So I'm very, you know, in some ways I'm very beholden, right? You know, I'm very appreciative of what they did.

I mean, Mary and I are circa the same, well, I'm a bit older. But circa that genre. Do you exchange wisdoms? Oh, yeah. Yeah. When you do anything hard, it takes time and perseverance, like we talked about. And you can get that, where do you get the fuel for it? You can either get it from your attitude or you can get it from your network or your relationships. And I'm a firm believer relationships are from what you give, not what you get. Meaning, you give, trust me, they will come back at the time they need to come back to you at these moments in life. If you focus on, how can I bring Lex value? There

will be a day I need Lex, he will be back. And so to those women, to me, relationships are not transactional. And it's a proof that to this day, to me, relationships are not transactional. And it's a proof that to this day, even though I'm no longer still active as a CEO, these are all still my friends. And we are friends, all of us. And I can remember some of them when I first became a CEO, calling me and saying, hey, it's a little lonely here. So let me talk to you.

And then when they became, I did the same for them. And then they remember, and they do for the next generation. And so it's a very supportive, almost to a T, any of the women you could name who have been CEOs, I would say, almost to a T have all been very supportive. In fact, a number of us work on a little, another non-for-profit right now called Journey, which some women who had started the Fortune's most powerful women had started, which was, could we get more women, particularly diverse women, but women in general just more quickly be into positions of leadership and power.

And so many of the women you named and more, you know, we all dedicate time mentoring in kind of creating this little group of fellows every year to do this. Friendship and love is quarter this whole thing, not just the success, but just the whole human condition. Let me ask one last question, advice for young people. You've had a difficult upbringing, a difficult life, and you've become one of the most successful human beings in history.

What advice would you give to young people? Or just people in general who are struggling a bit, trying to figure out how they can have a career that can be proud of, or maybe a life that can be proud of. I feel like a life you can be proud of is just one if you leave something a little bit better. It doesn't have to be big. You know, that's a life well lived, right?

It was Churchill who said, we may, it was how you might remember it better than I. You make a living by what you get and you live a life by what you give, something to that effect. But my advice would probably, when I'm asked this, I would tell them to ask more questions and give answers. Just, just focus on being a sponge. And it's funny. I asked my husband the same question the other day, I said, hey, we're talking to somebody and people were asking this. He started to pause for a while and he said, I tell him patience.

I said, what do you mean? And he said, I see so many young people, like they're in such a hurry to somewhere, I don't know where. And that if they just had patience and let life unfold, I think they make a surprise where they ended up. And actually, I think that's a really good answer, to be honest. Along the way, keep asking questions, keep that child like curiosity. I know. It sounds so easy to say. It's just so, you know, it's like you said, the obvious things. Yeah, I think they tend to be the most profound You're an incredible human being your inspiration so many. Thank you for

helping run and Contribute to one of the great companies that bring so much good power to the world and thank you for Putting in the hard work of putting it all in the great book So and thank you for talking today. This is a huge honor all in the great book. So and thank you for talking to us. This is a huge honor. Thank you for doing it. You did a lovely job.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Genie Rometti. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Eleanor Roosevelt. Do what you feel in your heart to be right. For you'll be criticized either way. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you