We needed to do a massive shift of resources, systems, and processes to make the new system work. Building an organizational plan was easy. It took three years of hard work to implement the plan, and implement it well.
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Reengineering is difficult, boring, and painful. One of my senior executives at the time said:
āReengineering is like starting a fire on your head and putting it out with a hammer.ā But IBM truly needed a top-to-bottom overhaul of its basic business operations.
All of this takes enormous commitment from the CEO to communicate, communicate, and communicate some more. No institutional transformation takes place, I believe, without a multi-year commitment by the CEO to put himself or herself constantly in front of employees and speak in plain, simple, compelling language that drives conviction and action throughout the organization.
This kind of wrenching cultural change doesnāt happen by executive fiat. As I found, I couldnāt flip a switch and alter behaviors. It was, by any measure, the hardest part of IBMās transformation, and at times I thought it couldnāt be done.
Tough as that was, we had to suck it up and take on the task of changing the culture, given what was at stake. I knew it would take at least five years. (In that I underestimated.) And I knew the leader of the revolution had to be meāI had to commit to thousands of hours of personal activity to pull off the change. I would have to be up-front and outspoken about what I was doing. I needed to get my leadership team to join me. We all had to talk openly and directly about culture, behavior, and beliefsāwe could not be subtle.
In an organization in which procedures had become un-tethered from their origins and intent, and where codification had replaced personal responsibility, the first task was to eradicate process itself. I had to send a breath of fresh air through the whole system. So I
took a 180-degree turn and insisted there would be few rules, codes, or books of proceduresā¦
I believe all high-performance companies are led and managed by principles, not by process. Decisions need to be made by leaders who understand the key drivers of success in the enterprise and then apply those principles to a given situation with practical wisdom, skill, and a sense of relevancy to the current environment.