Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs

If strategies could save the company, IBM would have been invincible.

IBM had a culture problem.

More specifically, IBM had a belief problem.

The company believed it was a hardware company, that its destiny was tied to selling mainframes and personal computers when the future actually belonged to services and solutions.

The company believed that its famous independence and decentralization were strengths when they had actually become weaknesses.

that prevented IBM from serving customers who needed integrated solutions.

The company believed that its best days were behind it, that the culture was too entrenched to change, that the elephant really couldn't dance.

These beliefs weren't written in any policy manual.

They weren't discussed in strategy meetings.

They were simply the water that IBM fish swam in.

So pervasive, so fundamental that nobody questioned them.

They were invincible.

And because they were invincible, they were almost impossible to change.

Gertzner's genius was recognizing that the beliefs were the problem, not the people, not the technology, not the competition, the beliefs.

He kept IBM together when everyone said to break it apart.

He bet the company on services when everyone said hardware was the core business.

He drove integration when everyone said decentralization was sacred.

And he did it not by replacing all of the people.

Most of IBM's transformations was executed by the same employees who had presided over his decline.

But by replacing the beliefs that made excellence impossible,