It worked, but it was a reminder to me of how difficult it is to get large organizations to give meaningful resources and attention to matters that offer little or no benefit to quarterly results, but which are critical to long-term success.
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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.
This is part of my management philosophy. Executives should know they donât accumulate wealth unless the long-term shareholders do the same.
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.
I suspect that many successful companies that have fallen on hard times in the pastâincluding IBM, Sears, General Motors, Kodak, Xerox, and many othersâsaw perhaps quite clearly the changes in their environment. They were probably able to conceptualize and articulate the need for change and perhaps even develop strategies for it. What I think hurt the most was their inability to change highly structured, sophisticated cultures that had been born in a different world.
Great companies cannot be built on processes alone. But believe me, if your company has antiquated, disconnected, slow-moving processesâparticularly those that drive success in your industryâyou will end up a loser.