Here was a man [Dennie Welsh] who understood what customers were willing to spend money on, and he knew what that meantânot just the business potential for IBM, but the coming restructuring of the industry around solutions rather than piece parts.
Related Quotes
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 successâthe more sophisticated, the more complicated the recipe, the better everyone would have liked it.
It wasnât going to work that way. The real issue was going out and making things happen every day in the marketplace.
I have always believed a successful company must have a customer/marketplace orientation and a strong marketing organization. Thatâs why my second step in creating a global enterprise had to be to fix and focus IBMâs marketing efforts.
I think you know the decision a former customer made, and IBM today is providing support for customers who still depend on OS/2.
Our wonderful technology was whipped by a product that was merely okay, but supported by a company that truly understood what the customer wanted. For a âsolutionsâ company like IBM, it was a bitter but vital lesson.
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.