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.
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That was a difficult time for me. I love building businesses, not disassembling them. However, we all have an opportunity to learn in everything we do. I came away from this experience with a profound appreciation of the importance of cash in corporate performanceââfree cash flowâ as the single most important measure of corporate soundness and performance.
Iâve 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 donât accumulate wealth unless the long-term shareholders do the same.
Many IT companies that have built their businesses on some proprietary product have tried to leap across that chasm. Few have made it across successfully.
This kind of wrenching cultural change doesnât happen by executive fiat. As I found, I couldnât flip a switch and alter behaviors. It was, by any measure, the hardest part of IBMâs transformation, and at times I thought it couldnât be done.