#362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity
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What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Jeannie Rometty, who was a longtime CEO, president, and chairman of IBM. And for many years, she was widely considered to be one of the most powerful women in the world. She's the author of a new book on power, leadership, and her life story called Good Power, coming out on March 7th. She is an incredible leader and human being, both fearless and compassionate. It was a huge honor and pleasure for me to sit down and have this chat with her. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Athletic Greens for health, ExpressVPN for privacy and security, and InsideTracker for biological monitoring.
Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfriedman.com slash hiring. And now on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens and the AG1 Drink, which is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. I've drank it twice today already. It's delicious, and it's a refreshing start for usually the second work session of the day. I start the day with a cup of coffee and just deep, deep, deep focus on the hardest task of the day. And then I break the fast with a flat of greens, either with a workout before or if I'm not working out that day, just with a kind of mental break.
A friend of mine has recently been pushing me to meditate, and so I've been taking that midday point as a kind of another opportunity to return to what I usually do in the morning, which is repeat the mantra for the day. But I do it less mantra-like and more just calming my mind and thinking about all the things I'm grateful for, really focusing on the gratitude part. Anyway, so that's associated with Athletic Greens, and also later on in the day, usually I'll take another Athletic Greens, and I'll do the same when I'm traveling. I got the travel packs, and I got, I guess, the non-travel pack version at home. They'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens.com slash lex.
This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN. I've used them for many years to protect my privacy on the internet. It actually takes me back to the early days of the internet for me, my own personal experience. And it was shadier and darker and more dangerous, but also more exciting. And it was unclear what the internet was going to become. And so there's that hacker, I guess, ethic. There's also a kind of deep sense of freedom. Before big companies came in and tried to figure out how to make a lot of money, and really through that process of capitalism, able to get kind of control. But I'm actually very, very happy to a degree that internet has maintained its freedom. But still, I think some of the initial days
of the real kind of almost anarchic freedom has dissipated somewhat. I think about that sometimes. And I think that's what a VPN represents to me is a kind of statement of freedom, of protecting your identity, of respecting your privacy. To me, it's a powerful statement. It's an important one to remember. And it's one I'll probably return to time and time again. Anyway, go to expressvpn.com slash LexPod for an extra three months free. This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data. They take a blood test from you and that blood test gives you a bunch of information about your body. And there's all kinds of information you can get from blood data, DNA data, fitness tracker data, all that kind of stuff.
And basically analyze what can be optimized about your body. I think there's a lot of interesting approaches to the way you optimize your body. It's important to have that data and it's important to make the right decisions based on that data, but not over obsess about the data.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is discussed at the start of this section?
0:00–22:18
2
What are the biggest challenges of running a large company?
22:18–43:54
3
How do you balance leadership and teamwork?
43:54–57:48
4
What insights does Ginni Rometty share about the pressures of being a CEO?
57:48–59:24
5
How did Ginni Rometty navigate IBM's reinvention during her leadership?
59:24–1:00:28
6
What lessons can be learned from the challenges faced in AI and consulting?
1:00:28–1:01:52
7
What advice does Ginni Rometty give to young people regarding their career paths?
1:01:52–1:56:09
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Lex Fridman Podcast
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