Robert Cringely has written myriad times on IBM. His most recent post was titled, “How to fix IBM”.
His solution is simple and easy: “Go back to customers being a corporate priority.”
But IBM, as it stands today, will never get there.
And all the “leadership” they’ve brought in over the years has only compounded their errors faster – they’ve never done anything to even try to fix them. Why? Because they keep bringing-in stodgy old-thinking people who have no concept about what customer service means.
Ginni Rometty, and the rest of the senior leadership at IBM, needs to go. Absolutely. But when IBM brings-in new leadership, it truly needs to be, well, “new”. You need the same kind of leadership sea change Jack Ryan championed in Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders – you don’t need career managers and “senior” leadership: you need people with ideas who are will to try something new. Who are willing to fail, but to fail fast. Who will learn from failure, and keep iterating until there’s something that works.
So, IBM, I have a simple solution for you: hire me as your CEO. Give me 36 months to fix your problems. If I haven’t, let me go back to whence I came. But when I have, Wall Street will love you, and you’ll be on track to stay relevant for the next hundred years. Or, at least the next 30 (since I’ll want to retire some day). I’ve got a team of people already in mind who can do more for you in 18 months than the entire executive team has done in the last 180.