I laid out my expectations:

• We would redefine IBM and its priorities starting with the customer. We would give our laboratories free rein and deliver open, distributed, user-based solutions.

• We would recommit to quality, be easier to work with, and reestablish a leadership position (but not the old dominance) in the industry.

• Everything at IBM would begin with listening to our customers and delivering the performance they expected.

I have always believed a successful company must have a customer/marketplace orientation and a strong marketing organization. That’s why my second step in creating a global enterprise had to be to fix and focus IBM’s marketing efforts.

Opening up our stack (and our minds) to others had many positive effects on IBM. It cut our losses and improved our integrated offerings to customers. And it freed up resources to invest in the future. Huge sums of money and huge quantities of brainpower have been redeployed from wall-banging futility to exciting new work in areas such as storage systems, self-directing computers, bioinformatics, and nanotechnology.

Our messaging allowed our customers to see benefits and value that were not being articulated by our competitors. The concept of e-business galvanized our workforce and created a coherent context for our hundreds of products and services.

I’m a strong believer in the power of language. The way an organization speaks to its various audiences says a lot about how it sees itself. Everywhere I’ve worked I’ve devoted a good deal of personal attention to the organization’s “voice”—to the conversations it maintains with all of its important constituencies, both inside and outside the company. And I have chosen my own words—whether in written, electronic, or face-to-face communications—very carefully.

The truth is, you can learn a great deal about a place simply by listening to how it talks.