Parachuting into a $65 billion company that was hemorrhaging cash and trying to turn it around is a daunting enough task. Trying to do it without a good CFO and HR director is impossible.

I’ve had a lot of experience turning around troubled companies, and one of the first things I learned was that whatever hard or painful things you have to do, do them quickly and make sure everyone knows what you are doing and why.

This is part of my management philosophy. Executives should know they don’t accumulate wealth unless the long-term shareholders do the same.

I have worked in services companies (McKinsey and American Express) and product companies (RJR Nabisco and IBM). I will state unequivocally that services businesses are much more difficult to manage.

This kind of wrenching cultural change doesn’t happen by executive fiat. As I found, I couldn’t flip a switch and alter behaviors. It was, by any measure, the hardest part of IBM’s transformation, and at times I thought it couldn’t be done.