It was clear that at all levels of the organization there was fear, uncertainty, and an extraordinary preoccupation with internal processes as the cause of our problems and, therefore, a belief that tinkering with the processes.

I’ve 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.

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.

We got there in stages because, while you can force anything down the throat of an organization, if people don’t buy into the logic, the change won’t stick.

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 “solutions” company like IBM, it was a bitter but vital lesson.