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.

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.

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

This kind of wrenching cultural change doesn’t happen by executive fiat. As I found, I couldn’t flip a switch and alter behaviors. It was, by any measure, the hardest part of IBM’s transformation, and at times I thought it couldn’t be done.

If a CEO thinks he or she is redirecting or reintegrating an enterprise but doesn’t distribute the basic levels of power (in effect, redefining who “calls the shots”), the CEO is trying to push string up a hill.