The discussion that ensued was very sobering. IBM’s sales and profits were declining at an alarming rate. More important, its cash position was getting scary.

Now, I must tell you, I am not sure that in 1993 I or anyone else would have started out to create an IBM. But, given IBM’s scale and broad-based capabilities, and the trajectories of the information technology industry, it would have been insane to destroy its unique competitive advantage and turn IBM into a group of individual component suppliers—more minnows in an ocean.

However, what was also clear was that IBM was paralyzed, unable to act on any predictions, and there were no easy solutions to its problems. The IBM organization, so full of brilliant, insightful people, would have loved to receive a bold recipe for success—the more sophisticated, the more complicated the recipe, the better everyone would have liked it.

It wasn’t going to work that way. The real issue was going out and making things happen every day in the marketplace.

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

I can understand the joke that was going around IBM in the early 1990s: “Products aren’t launched at IBM. They escape.