#362 – Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity - Transcripts

is a conversation with Jeannie Vermetty, 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 the Inside Tracker for biological monitoring. She's wise and my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring, go to luxfeedman.com slash hiring. And now, on to the full ad reads.

Let's start with a sort of big overview question. The biggest challenges I think are not in running them, it's in changing them. And that idea to know what you should change and what you should not change. Actually, people don't always ask that question. What should endure, even if it has to be modernized, but what should endure? And then I found the hardest part was changing how work got done.

It's such a big company. What was the parts that you thought should endure? The core of the company that was beautiful and powerful and could persist through time,

that it should persist through time. I'd be interested, do you have a perception

of what you think it would be? Do I have a perception? Well, I'm a romantic for a history of long-running companies. So there's kind of a tradition as a AI person. To me, IBM has some epic sort of research accomplishments where you show off Deep Blue and Watson, just impressive big moonshot challenges and accomplishing those. But that's, I think, probably a small part of what IBM is.

That's mostly like the sexy public facing part and accomplishing those. Yeah, well, certainly the research part itself is over 3,000, so it's not that small. That's a pretty big research group. But the part that should endure ends up being a company that does things that are essential to the world, meaning, the who, you know, think back, you said you're a romantic, it was the 30s, the social security system. It was putting the man on the moon. It was, to this day, banks don't run, railroads don't run, that is at its core, it's doing mission-critical work. And so, that part I think is at its core, it's a business-to-business company and at its core, it's about doing things that are really important

to the world becoming running and being better. Running the infrastructure of the world,

so doing it at scale, doing it reliably. Yes, secure in this world, that's like everything. And in fact, when I started, I almost felt people were looking for what that was. And together we sort of, in a word, was to be essential. And the reason I loved that word was, I can't call myself essential. You have to determine I am, right? So it was to be essential. Even though some of what we did is exactly what you said, it's below the surface, so many people, most people say to me, well, what does IBM do now, right? And over the years, it's changed so much. And today it's really a software and consulting company. Consulting is a third of it. And the software is all hybrid cloud and AI.

but mission critical work. So given the size though, when you started running it, did you feel the sort of thing that people usually associate with size, which is bureaucracy, and maybe the aspect of size that hinder progress or hinder pivoting, did you feel that?

You would, for lots of reasons. I think when you're a big company, sometimes people think of process as the client themselves, or the, you know, I always say to people, your process is not your customer. There is a real customer here that you exist for. And that's really easy to fall into because they're, you know, people are a master to this process and that's not right. And when you're big, the other thing, and boy, there's a premium on it, is speed, right? That in our industry, you gotta be fast. And go back, like when I took over and it was 2012, you know, we had a lot of catching up to do and a lot of things to do, and it was moving so fast. And as you well know, all those trends were happening at once, which made them go even faster. And so pretty unprecedented actually for that many trends to be at one time. And I used to say to people, go faster, go faster, go faster. And honestly, I've tired them out. I mean, it kind of dawned on me that when you're that big, that's a really valuable lesson.

You gotta get a lot of people to work that way. To really change it. The blunt club thing you're talking about.

So flatten the organization as much as possible. So as much as possible. Yeah, yeah. I probably reduce the layers of management by half. And so that has lots of benefits, right? Time to a decision, more autonomy to people. And then the idea of faster clarity of where you're going. Because you're not just filtered through so many different layers. And I think it's the kind of thing a lot of companies, if you're big, have to just keep going through. It's kind of like grass grows. You know, it just comes back. And you gotta go back down and work on it.

So, I mean, your book in general, the way you lead is very much about we and us. You know, the power of we. But is there times when a leader has to step in and be almost autocratic, take control

and make hard, unpopular decisions? Oh, I am sure you know the answer to that. And it is, of course, yes. It's just fun to hear you say it. It's fun to say it. Yeah, you know, because I actually, A, there's a leader for a time, but then there's a leader for a situation, right? And so I've had to do plenty of unpopular things. I think anytime you have to run a company that endures a century and has to endure another century, you will do unpopular things. You have no choice. And I often felt I had to sacrifice things for the long term. And whether that would have been, you know, really difficult things like, you know, job changes or reductions, or whether it would be things like, hey, you know, we're gonna change the way we do our semiconductors and a whole different philosophy. You have no choice.

or half a million, they're not popularity contests. Of course, yes. It's just fun to hear you say. But psychologically, is it difficult to just sort of step in as a new CEO and, because you're fighting against tradition and against all these people that act like experts of their thing, and they are experts of their thing,

to step in and say, we have to do it differently. We have to do it differently. When you gotta change a company, it's really tempting to say, throw everything else out, back to that what must endure, right? But, I know when I took over to start, I knew how much had to change, more I got into it, I could see, wow, a lot more had to change, right? Because we needed a platform, we'd always done our best, when we had a platform, a technology platform. You will go back in time and you'll think of the mainframe systems. You'll think of the PC. You'll think of perhaps Middleware, you could even call services, a platform, we needed a platform, the next platform to be there. Skills, when I took over, we inventoried, who had modern skills for the future, it was two out of 10 people, for the future. Not that they didn't have relevant skills today, but for the future, two out of 10, yikes, that's a big problem, right? The speed at which things were getting done, that has to, so you got so much to do, and you say, is that a scary thing? Yes, do you have to sometimes dictate?

but you can engineer that and get people to build belief. And for the skills, that means hiring, that means training.

Yes, yes, oh boy, that's a long, skills is a really long topic in and of itself. I try to put my view in it, I learned a lot, and I changed my view on this a lot. I'll go back at my very beginning, say 40 years ago, I would have said at that point, okay, I was always in a hurry. I was interviewing to hire people, I don't know how you hire people. 40 years ago, I'd be like, okay, I gotta fit in these interviews. I gotta hire someone to get this done, okay. Then time would go on, I'm like, that's not very good. In fact, someone once said to me, hey, hire the best people to work for you and your job gets a lot easier. Okay, I should spend more time on this topic. I spent more time on it. Then it was like, okay, hire experts, okay? Okay, hired a lot of experts over my life.

I will take that trait over anything else they have. So the interview process, the question, everything changed. The kind of things you talked to them about is try to get at how curious they are about the world.

Testing, change, everything. We can do testing and I mean, there's what we triangulated around it lots of ways. And now look, they're at the heart of it. What it would do is change. You don't think of buying skills. You see, you think of building skills. And when you think that way, with so many people, and I think this country, many developed countries being disenfranchised, you got to bring them back into the workforce somehow. And they got to get some kind of contemporary skills. And if you took that approach, you can bring them back

into the workforce. Yeah, I think some interesting combination of humility and passion, because like you said, experts sometimes lack humility if they call themselves an expert for a few too many years. So you have to have that beginner's mind and a passion to be able to aggressively constantly be a beginner

at everything and learn and learn and learn. I saw it firsthand when we were beginning this path down the cloud and AI, and people would say, oh, IBM, it's existential. They got to change and all these things. And I did hire a lot of people from outside, very willing to learn new things. Come on in, come on in. And I sometimes say, shiny objects, trained in shiny objects, come on in. But I saw something, it was another one of these, and you're not a shiny object, I'm not saying that. But I learned something. Okay, some of them did fantastic. And others, they're like, well, let me school you on everything. But they didn't realize like, we did really mission critical work, and then break a bank. I mean, they would not understand the certain kind of security and the auditability and everything they had to go on.

you name it. Yeah, the AI in general, it seems like nobody really understands now what the future will look like. Well, I'll try and figure it out. So like what IBM will look like in 50 years in relation to the software business to AI is unknown. What Google will look like with all these companies. We're trying to figure it out. And that means constantly learning, taking risks, all of those things. And nobody's really skilled in AI. It's like, because you have to keep evolving, right?

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. That's right.

Couldn't agree more with you on that. You wrote in the book, speaking of hiring, quote, my drive for perfection often meant I only focused on what needed to change without acknowledging the positive. This could keep people from trusting themselves. It could take me a while to learn that just because I could point something out didn't mean I should. I still spotted errors, but I became more deliberate about what I mentioned and sent back to get fixed. I also tried to curtail my tendency to micromanage and let people execute. I had to stop assuming my way was the best or only way. I was learning that giving other people control builds their confidence and that constantly trying to control people destroys it. So what's the right balance between showing the way

and helping people find the way? That is a good question because like a really flip answer would be as it gets bigger, you have no choice, but to just, you know, you can't do it. You have to tell or show. I mean, you've got to let people find their way because it's so big, you can't, right? That's an obvious answer. Scope of work, bigger it gets. Okay, I've got to let more stuff go. But I have always believed that a leader's job is to do as well. And I think there's like a few areas that are really important that you always do. Now it doesn't mean you're showing. So like when it has to do with values and value-based decisions, like I think it's really important to constantly show people that you walk your talk on that kind of thing. It's super important.

like when do you let go of stuff, right?

The values and relationships with clients. Yeah, whatever you're in service of. And the other thing was, I really felt it was really important to role model learning, right? So, I can remember when we started down the journey, and we went on to this thing called the Think Academy, IBM's long time motto had been think. And we said, okay, I'm gonna make the first Friday of every month compulsory education. And, okay, I mean, everybody, like everybody, I don't care what your job is, okay? When the whole company has to transform, everybody's gotta have some skin in this game and understand it. I taught the first hour of every month for four years. Now, okay, I had to learn something. So, but it made me, but I feel like, okay, if I can teach, the shoe can do it, right?

I mean, kind of thing. So, it was a compulsory Thursday night education for you? Oh, I'm a little bit better prepared than that,

but yeah, so you're a little bit better prepared than that, but yes, you're so right, yes.

So, you prepare. So, like personality wise- That's another habit.

You like to prepare. So, like personality- That's another habit. Yeah, but this roots in that go back deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, And I think it's an interesting reason so why do why are you you're prepared my friend? Yeah. Yes, you are you prepare for your interviews. Uh

Sure the rest you wing yeah, I wing

Okay, I mean you don't have to prepare everything I don't prepare everything either

No, but I unfortunately wing stuff. I save it to last-minute. I push everything I'm always almost late and I don't know why that is. I mean, there's some deep psychological thing We should probably investigate but it's probably the anxiety brings out the performance that can be that's very true with some people I mean, so I'm a programmer engineer at heart and so So programmers famously overestimate or underestimate Sorry, how long that something's going to take and so I just everything always underestimate It's almost as if I want to feel this chaos of anxiety of a deadline or something like this Otherwise, I'll be lazy sitting on a beach with a pina colada and relaxing Yeah, I don't know so that we have to know ourselves but for you for me you like to prepare. Yeah

Yeah, it came from a few different places. I mean one would have been as a as a kid I think I was not a memorizer and my brother is brilliant He can he read it once boom done And so I always wanted to understand like how something happened didn't matter what it was I was doing it whether it was algebra theorems. I was wanted don't give me the answer Don't give me the answer You know, I want to figure it out figure out so I could reproduce it again and didn't have to memorize So it started with that and then over time Okay, so I was in university in the 70s when I was in engineering school I was the only woman, you know, I'll meet people still to this day and they're like, oh, I remember you I'm like, yeah, sorry. I don't remember you there were 30 of you one of me and I Think you already get that feeling of okay I better really study hard because whatever I say is going to be remembered in this class Good or bad in it started there. So in some ways I did it for two reasons early on I think it was a shield for confidence The more I studied the more prepared I was the more confident That's probably still true to this day. The the second reason I did it evolved over time and became different to prepare If I was really prepared Then when we're in the moment, I can really listen to you see because I don't have to be doing all this stuff on the fly in my head and I could actually take things I know and Maybe help the situation. So it really became a way that I could be present and in the moment and I Think it's something a lot of people that in the moment. I learned it from my husband He doesn't prepare by the way at all. So that's not it But I but I watch the in the moment the negative exam. No, no, no He died and I'm not going to change that as he says it's a tight see I'm an A Okay, I'll love works. Yeah, and I have been married 43 years that seems to work So but that idea that you could be in the moment with people is a really important thing

But how did you but I watched the in the moment the negative. Yes, I'm an A. Okay, so love works Yeah, yeah, so the preparation gives you the freedom to really be present so just a linger on the you mentioned your brother and it seems like in the book that you really had to Work hard when you study to sort of Given that you weren't good at memorization You really truly deeply want to understand the stuff and you put in the hard work and that seems to persist throughout your career so You know hard work is often associated with Sort of has negative associations. Well, maybe with burnout with dissatisfaction Is there some aspect of hard work at the core of who you are that led to happiness for you? I

Enjoy it so I'll be the first in and I'm really careful to say that to people because I don't think everyone should associate G To do what you did? You have to there's only one route there right and that's just not true And I I do it because I like it in fact I'm careful and as time goes on you have to be careful is more people watch you whether you like it You're a role model or not. You are a role model for people Whether you know it like it on it does not matter I learned that the hard way and I would have to say people hey just cuz I do this does not mean I do it For these reasons, right? It's a be really explicit and I'd come to believe usually when people say the word power I don't know. Do you have a positive or negative notion when I say the word power? We're just doing probably negative one Yeah for some stereotype or some view that it's somebody's abused it in some way. You can read the newspaper. Somebody's doing something Personal people like I'll ask people do you want power and they're like, oh no, I'd rather do good Yeah, and I think the irony is you need power to do good. And so that sort of led me down to in

It was I thought about my own life, right? Cuz it's it starts in a probably negative one

Yeah, like many of us, you know, you don't have a lot but you don't know that because you're like everybody else around you At that time and I went in tragedy, right? My father leaves my mother a homeless no money. No food. Nothing for kids. She's never worked a day in her life outside of a home and I the irony that I hear I would end up as the ninth CEO of one of America's iconic companies And now I co-chair this group 110 and that journey I said the biggest thing I learned was you could do really hard meaningful things in a positive way So now you asked me about why do I work so hard? I ended up writing the book in three pieces for this reason when you really think of your life and power I thought it kind of felt like a pebble in water. Like there's a ring about You really care about yourself and like the power of yourself power of me There's a time it transcends to that you are working with and for others in another moment when it becomes like about society So my hard work I'd ask you One day sit really hard and think about when you close your eyes. Who do you see from your early life? Right and what did you learn? And maybe it's not that hard for you. I mean it was it's It's funny the things then right if I really looked at it it's no surprise what I do today and that hard work part my great-grandma as you and I were comparing notes on Russia, right and Never spoke English spoke Russian came here to this country was a cleaning person at the Wrigley building in Chicago Yet if she hadn't saved every dime she made My mother wouldn't have a home and wouldn't have had a car. Right?

Yeah, cuz you're against in my memory like that You seem to like at least certain moments in your life seem to

Do well in desperate times true enough. I true enough. That's true I learned that very well, but I also think that maybe this isn't the same kind of plan B I think of it as like I was taught like always be able to take care of yourself Don't have to rely on someone else. Sure. And I think that to me that so so that's my plan B I can take care of myself and it's it's even after what I lived through with my father I thought well this set a bar for bad after this

Nothing's bad and in that it's a very freeing thought the being able to take care of yourself Is that you mean practically do you mean just a self-belief that I'll figure it out?

I'll figure it out and practically both, right?

So you wrote quote? I vividly remember the last two weeks of my freshman year when I only had 25 cents left I put the quarter in a clear plastic box on my desk and just stared at it. This is it I thought no more money So do you think there's some aspect of that financial stress even desperation just being hungry? Does that play a role in that drive that led to your success to be the CEO, you know?

one of the great companies ever it's ever it's a really interesting question because I was just talking to another colleague who's CEO of another great American company this weekend and He mentioned to me about all this adversity and he said I said to him I said Do you think? Part of your success is because you had bad stuff happen and he said yes, you know And so I I guess I'd be Lying if I didn't say I don't think you have to have tragedy But it does teach you like one really important thing is that there is always a way forward

Always and it's in your control. I think there's probably wisdom for mentorship there or whether your parent or a mentor

That easy times don't result in growth. Yeah, I've heard a lot of my friends and they they worry They said my kids have never had bad times Yeah, and so what you know what happens here. So, I don't know is it is it required? And why you end up? Not required, but it sure didn't hurt

Yeah, you had this good line about advice you were given that growth and comfort never coexist

Growth and comfort never coexist and you have to get used to that thought if someone said that they think of me like one of the more profound lessons I had

In the irony is it's from my husband and that which is even more, you know, funny. Actually, I really found

You could just steal it. I mean, you know, I have shamelessly he'll tell you. Oh, I have shamelessly he'll tell you Okay, so the story behind growth and comfort never coexist But honestly, I think it's been a really freeing thought for me and it's helped me immensely since mid-career and as I write about it in the book, I'm mid-career and I've been running a pretty big business actually in the fellow. I workforce gonna get a new job It's gonna get promoted. He calls me and he says hey, you're gonna get my job I really want you to have it and I said to him no way. I said, I'm not ready for that job I got a lot more things. I got to learn that is like a huge job around the world every product line Development, you name it every function. I can't do it. He looked at me He says well, I think you should go to the interview. I went to interview the next day But blah blah guy says to me looks at me and he says I want to offer you that job And I said I would like to think about it. I said I want to go home and talked to my husband about it I kind of looked at me. Okay, I went home.

I'm still terrified. I think it's interesting. Maybe you could speak to that, the sort of the self critical thing inside your, inside your brain. Because I think sometimes it's talked about the women have that. But I have that, definitely. And I think that's not just solely property of women in the workplace. But I also want to sort of push back on the idea that that's a bad thing that you should silence because I think that anxiety, that leads to growth also. That's like this discomfort. There's this weird balance you have to have between that self critical engine and confidence. Yeah, I think that's a good point. You have to kind of dance because if you're super confident, people will value you higher, that's important. But if you're way too confident, maybe in the short term you'll gain

but in the long term, you won't grow. Yes, I think that's a good point. Very good point. So I can't really disagree with that. And to me even when I took on jobs, I always felt people say, well, is it, you know, what point are you confident enough? And I came to sort of believe, again, a theme of my beliefs that if I was willing to ask lots of questions and understood enough,

that's all I needed to know. Let me ask you about your husband a little bit. So you write in the book, you write in the book, he's just jumping around, and like I said,

I'm a bit of a romantic, so how did you meet your husband? Husband a little bit, so you write. So I met my husband when I was 19 years old, so I was a young kid, and I met him when I had a General Motors scholarship. So I was at Northwestern University through my first two years, had a lot of loans, financial aid, and a professor said, hey, you should sign up for this interview. They're looking to bring forward diverse candidates through their management track. Now these programs don't exist anymore like that. They will pay your tuition, your room and board, your expenses, Northwestern, other Ivy League schools, these very expensive schools, and I think you'd be a good fit. I am eternally thankful for that advice. I went and I interviewed, I actually got the scholarship. I mean, without it, I'd have graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. So part of that was in the summer, I had to work in Detroit. I lived in a little room by a cement plant, not theirs, but I mean, that's all I could afford.

And then it was over, it was, the story was written. It was over, it was, the story was written. Yep. Let's, if it's okay, just zoom out to, you mentioned power and good power a few times. So if we can just even talk about it, your book is called Good Power, Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work and World. What is good power?

What's the essence of good power? So the essence of it would be doing something hard or meaningful, but in a positive way. I would also tell you, I hope one day I'm remembered for how I did things, not just for what I did. I think that could almost be more important, and I think it's a choice we can all make. So the essence to me of good power, if I had to contrast good to bad, let's say, would be that first off, you have to embrace and navigate tension. This is the world we live in. And by embracing tension, not running from it, you would bridge divides that unites people, not divides them. It's hard thing to do, but you can do it. You do it with respect, which is the opposite of fear. A lot of people think way to get things done is fear. And then the third thing would be, you gotta celebrate some progress versus perfection. Because I also think that's what stops a lot of things from happening.

It's the upside and the downside. And that there could be much larger implications that are much more difficult to predict and it's our responsibility. Absolutely.

To really work hard to figure that out. Absolutely. I was talking to AI ethics a decade ago and I'm like, why won't anybody listen to us? That's another one of those values things that you realize, hey, if I want to bring technology in the world, I better bring it safely. And that to me comes with when you're an older company that's been around, you realize that society gave you a license to operate and it can take it away. And we see that happen to companies and therefore you're like, okay, like why I feel so strong about skills. Hey, if I'm going to bring in, it's going to create all these new jobs, job dislocation, then I should help. I'm trying to help people get new skills. Anyways, that's a long answer to what good tech, but the idea that there's kind of in retrospect a set of principles you could look at and maybe learn something from my sort

of rocky road through there. But it started with the power of we, and there's that big leap I think that propagates through the things you're saying, which is the leap from focusing on yourself to the focusing on others. So that having that empathy you've said at some point in our lives and careers, our attention turns from ourselves to others. We still have our own goals, but we recognize that our actions affect many, that it is impossible to achieve anything truly meaningful alone. So it's to you, I think maybe you can correct me, but ultimate good power is about collaboration

and maybe in large companies like delegation on great teams. The ultimate good power is actually doing something for society. That would be my ultimate definition of good power by the way, but how it's done, right? The how it's done. And so when you set a leap, do you think people make a leap when they go from thinking about themselves to others?

Do you think it's a leap or do you think it kind of just is a good part by the way? Because about the results of the thing. Yeah. Do you think it's sort of a slow point? I think the leap is in deciding that you will care about others. That it's like a leap of going to the gym for the first time. It's yes, it takes a long time to develop that and to actually care, but the decision that I'm going to actually care about are the human beings, yeah. I think, or at least like, yeah, it just feels like a deliberate action

you take of empathy. Yeah, because sometimes I think it happens a little, it's maybe not as deliberate, yeah, it's a little more gradual because it might happen because you realize that, geez, I can't get this done alone. So I got to have other people with me. Well, how do I get them to help me do something? So I think it does help and it'll happen a little bit more gradually. And as you get more confident, you start to not think so much that it's about you, and you start to think about this other thing you're trying to accomplish. And so, that's why I felt it was a little more gradual. I also felt like I can remember so well, this idea that, again, now we're in the 80s, 90s, I'm a woman, I'm in technology, and I was down in Australia at a conference, and I gave this great speech, again, I'm thinking of this great speech, financial services, this guy man walks up to me after, I think he's gonna ask me some great question, and he said to me, I wish my daughter could have been here. And in that moment, and at that point up to then, I'd always been about, look, please don't notice I'm a woman, do not notice that. I am, I just wanna be recognized for my work. Crossing over from me to we, like it or not, I was a role model for some number of people. And maybe I didn't wanna be, but that didn't really matter.

that transom into the power of we. You're one of the most powerful tech leaders ever. And as you mentioned the word power, you know, the old saying goes power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Was there an aspect of power that was, that you had to resist its ability to corrupt your mind to sort of delude you into thinking you're smarter than you are, that kind of, all the ways.

That's very dangerous, that's very dangerous. I agree with, I mean, I think you gotta be careful who you surround yourself with. That's how I would answer that question, right? And people who will hold the mirror up to you can be done in a very positive way, by the way. It doesn't mean, you know, but that we're sycophants, you cannot have that, right? I mean, it's like I would say to someone, hey, listen to me, who would make me better or do something or I have a husband that'll do that for me quite easily, by the way, you'll always tell me. But he's the one that can do some criticism sometimes. I have been surrounded myself with a number of people that will do that and I think you have to have that. I had a woman that worked with me for a very long time and at one time we were competitors and at some point she started to work for me and stayed with me for a great way and she was one of the few people that would tell me the truth in you know, Sometimes I'm like, enough already. And she'd be like, do not roll your eyes at this. And you absolutely have got to have that. And I think it also comes, it'll go back to my complete commitment to inclusion and diversity, because you gotta have that variety around you.

He's the one that kind of gives you some criticism. So you write a ball and in general, you value diversity a lot. So can you speak to almost like philosophically,

what does diversity mean to you? Diversity to me means, I'm gonna get a better product, a better answer. I value different views. And so it's inclusion. So I always say inclusion, diversity is a number, inclusion is a choice. And you can make that choice every single day. That's a good line. I really believe and I've witnessed it that I've had when my teams are diverse, I get a better answer. My friends are diverse. I have a better life. I mean, all these kinds of things. And so, I also believe it's like No Silver Thread, There's No Easy Way.

that diversity is a good thing?

Yeah, but I believe that diversity like broadly. I very broadly define it.

Yeah. Sometimes the way diversity is looked at with the way diversity is used today as surface level characteristics, which are also important, but they're usually reflective of something else, which is a diversity of background, a diversity of thought, a diversity of struggle, some people to grow up middle class, versus poor, different countries, different motivations, all of that, ya, is beautiful, and different people from very different walks of life get together, ya, it's beautiful to see, but sometimes it's very difficult to get at that on a sheet of paper of the characteristics that defines

the diversity of diversity. I know, I know. So it is, it is just like, oh, I can't hire exactly for inquirer if you are trying to. But I do know one thing that when people say, oh, I can't find these kind of people I'm looking for, I'm like, you're just not looking in the right places. You have to open up, just say.

You gotta really open up new pools, right? You gotta really open up new pools, right? Yeah, you have to think, like everybody, you don't have to have a PhD,

just like you said, yeah. I'm sorry to say it, you know, I know it's very valuable what you have,

trust me, but. You could, just like you said, it could even be a negative. So you mentioned like for good power, you are a CEO for a long time of a public company. Were there times when there was pressure to sacrifice what is good for the world for the bottom line in order to do what's good for the company?

There were a lot of times for that. Negative. Yeah, there were a lot of times for that. I mean, I think every company faces that today in that I always felt like there's so much discussion about stakeholder capitalism, right? Do you just serve a shareholder? Do you have multiple? I have always found, and I've been very vocal about that topic, that when I participated the Business Roundtable wrote up a new purpose statement that had multiple stakeholders. I think it's common sense. Like if you're gonna be 100 years old, you only get there because you actually do at some time balance all these different stakeholders and what it is that you do. And short term, long term, all these trade-offs. And I always say people who write about it, they write about it black and white, but I have to live in a gray world. Nothing I've ever done has been in a black and white world hardly, maybe things of values that I had to answer.

of what am I giving up? Well, what is that partnership like with the clients? Because you work with gigantic businesses and what's it like sort of really forming a great relationship with them, understanding what their needs are, being in service of their needs.

In service of, in service of, yeah, very simple. Honor your promises and that happens over time. I mean, in service of, which is often why you could work with competitors because if you are really in service of you and you need something, it takes two of us to do it, that becomes easier to do because I really, we both care, you get what you needed. And so I can remember during one of the times I was on a European trip and at the time, and this is still true about views about technology and national technology giants and global ones and the pros and the cons and countries want their own national champions, quite obvious. I mean, if I'm France or Germany, and there was a lot of discussion about security and data and who was getting access to what. And I can remember being in one of the, I was with Chancellor Merkel, had met her many times. She's very well prepared, very well prepared every time she would know. And I started to explain all these things about why, how we don't share data, how, who it belongs to, our systems never had back doors and she sort of stopped me. Like you're one of the good guys, like stop. Now, that wasn't about me personally. She's talking about a company that's acted consistent with values for decades, right? So to me, how you work with those big kind of clients is you honor your promises, you say what you do when you do what you say and you act with values over a long period of time.

It's okay for a while until-

And never sacrifice that. You would never sacrifice that.

I don't think you can. So there was a lot of pressure when you took over as CEO and there was 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline between 2012 and the summer of 2017. So it was a stressful time, maybe not. Maybe you can correct me on that. So as a CEO, what was it like going through that time? The decisions, the tensions in terms of investing

versus making a profit. I always felt that that sense of urgency was so high. And even if I was calm on the outside, because you have one of the world's largest pensions. So so many people depend on you. You have a huge workforce. They're depending on you. You have clients whose businesses don't run if you don't perform, et cetera. And shareholders, of course, right? And so, but I also am really clear. This was perhaps the largest reinvention IBM ever had to undertake. Had a board that understood that. In fact, some people, some of the headlines were like, this is existential, right?

you know it's the right thing to do, you just keep going. So the team had the vision, they had the belief

in everything else, the criticism doesn't matter. We didn't always have exactly the right, You know, this wasn't a straight arrow. But, stay down, you know you're right. Keep going, okay, made a mistake. You know, there's no bad mistake as long as you learn from it, right? And keep moving. So, yes, did it take longer,

but we are the largest that was there. Could you maybe just, on a small tangent, educate me a little bit. So, right had originally is Linux, Open Source, Distribution of Linux, but it's also consulting...

It's a little bit of consulting, but it's mostly software district, it's mostly Linux.

It was mostly software, yeah, absolutely. It's mostly Linux. It was mostly, absolutely, absolutely. So, but today IBM is very much, there's, you know. Services. Most IT services in the world is done by IBM. There's so many varied, so basically if you have issues, problems to solve in business, in the software space,

IBM can help. Yes, and so in that my last year, our services business, we broke it into two pieces. And one piece was spun off into a company called Kindrel, which is managed outsourcing, keeping things running and they're off creating their own company. What IBM then retained is really the part I built with PWCC, the big consulting arm. And so today, the IBM of today in 2023 is, you know, or at least ending 2022, was 30% consulting and the other 70% would be, what would you consider software cloud AI? So hybrid cloud and AI is the other, and some hardware, obviously. Still, the mainframe is modernized, alive and kicking and still running some of the most important things every bank you can think of practically in the world. And so that is the IBM of today, versus perhaps, you know, and Red Hat is a big piece in an important part of that software portfolio. And they had some services with them for implementation, but it wasn't a very large part. And it's grown by leaps and bounds, you know, because originally the belief was everything was gonna go to the public cloud. And at least many people thought that way. We didn't, in fact, I mean, we tried, we procured a public cloud company, we really tried to work it, but what we found was a lot of the mission critical work, it was tuned for consumer world, it wasn't tuned for the enterprise.

with Red Hat, that belief. The structure of that is fundamentally different than something that's consumer facing. So the lesson you learn there is you can't just

reuse something that's optimized for consumers. Very interesting point. It doesn't mean consumer companies can't move up into the enterprise, because obviously they have, right? But I think it's very hard to take something from the enterprise and come on down. Because it's gotta be simple, consumable,

all the things we talked about already. Plus you have to have the relationships with the enterprise.

Yeah, very different, yeah, very different. Yeah, I mean, you know our history, right? At one time we had the PC business, and the short answer to why we would not do that is it's a consumer facing business. We were good at the enterprise, and that consumer business, A, highly competitive, gotta be low cost, all the things that are not the same muscles necessarily of being

in an innovation driven technology business. Yeah, but what is now Lenovo, I guess, that's what just spent out. That's right, Lenovo acquired it. You're extremely good at that. So, but not as good as you're saying is at an enterprise,

or it's not, it was a great thing to just spend out. Lenovo's very good at their PC world, yes, but I wouldn't, and they can sell into the enterprise. But you as a consumer can go buy Lenovo too. So look in China, right? Look in other places. So that's what I mean by consumer, you know, an end device. And that was a big decision, because it would have been one of the last things that had our logo on it that sits in your hands, right?

So when a new generation says, well, what does IBM do, right? Was that a difficult decision?

Do you remember? Do you remember? This is a long time ago now, it's like 2005. So they're all difficult, because it's not only things as people, but it's back to knowing who you are is how I would sum that up as, right? And we were never great at making a lot of money at that. And you can remember, originally it was IBM PC, then there were IBM clones. They even called IBM clones back then, as the field became highly, highly competitive. And as things commoditized, we often, as they commoditize, we would move them out and move on to the next innovation level.

It was like 2005. Yeah. But because of that, it's not as public facing. That's right, that's absolutely right.

Even though it's the most recognizable logos ever. Yeah, isn't it true? That is very true. That is actually a very important point. And that is branding, as you say, one of the most recognizable in a very highly ranked brand strength around the world. And so that's a trade-off. I mean, I can't, you know, because there was a time you'd have something of IBM in your home or a cash register as an example. You'd walk into a store, actually they're still in places.

That went to Toshiba. Can you speak to consulting a little bit? What does that entail to train up, to hire a workforce that can be of service to all kinds of different problems in a software space, in a tech space?

What's entailed in that, in a tech space? I mean, you have to value a different set of things, right? And so you've got to always stay ahead. It's about hiring people who are willing to learn. It is about, at the same time, in my view,

it's what really drives you to be customer-centric. Maybe you can educate me. I think consulting is a kind of, you roll in and you try to solve problems that businesses have, like with expertise, right? Okay.

Is that the process of consulting? Okay. Is that the process of consulting? Somewhat, right? So that's, okay, so fair enough. When you say that we're consulting, it's a really broad spectrum. I mean, I think people could be sitting here thinking it does any, it could be, I just give advice and I leave, to all the way to, I run your systems, right? And I think it's generally, people use the word to cover everything in that space. So we sort of fit in the spot, which is we would come in and live at that intersection of business and technology. So yeah, we could give you recommendations, and then we'd implement them and see them through because we had the technology to go to the implementation and see them through. And at the time back then, that's what, you know, there'd been five of those that had failed that the companies had bought other consulting firms. And so we were, okay, that was the great thing about, I mean, the harrowing thing about it was, here, please go work on this.

Yeah, the see it all the way through, yes. So let me say it's almost like a personal question. So that was a big thing you were a part of that you led in 2002 that you championed and helped, I should say, negotiate the purchase of Monday, the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers for $3.5 billion. So what were some of the challenges of that

that you remember, personal and business? At that time, PW really had to divest. And so they were in parallel going to IPO, right? So we sort of swept in at that point and said, and we'd been thinking about it a long time and started to work on that as an acquisition. So kind of balancing which way would they go, IPO or acquisition. And so the challenges are obvious and part of it's why they went with us as an acquisition. Big difference to be a private firm than a public firm. Very big, I can remember one of the guys, he asked somebody how long you've been with IBM and the person answered 143 quarters. Okay, that's a little enlightening about a business model, right? So we had the challenges of being private versus public. You have the challenge of when you acquire something like that, as I say, you acquire hearts, not parts. They could leave.

So yeah, it was a tough thing to do. Okay, that's a little enlightening about a business model. What about the personal side of that? That was a big leap, step up for you. You've been at IBM for a long time. This is a big sort of leadership, like very impactful, large scale leadership decisions.

What was that like? So, unlike in my career earlier where I said I was changing jobs, I said I wasn't comfortable, et cetera. So now here, fast forward 10 years, and I'm like, okay. Honestly, how I felt inside, on one hand, I did what I learned, like inventory, which you know how to do. Like you have some good strengths that could work here. The other part of me said, boy, this is a really high profile. And I felt, and I can remember saying to someone, like this is gonna kill me or catapult.

Probably nothing in between. And that wasn't terrifying to you. That was okay. You're okay with that kind of pressure.

I was okay with that because I felt, I knew enough, you know, like these things I had, and I'll tell you one thing I felt I knew the best. Consultants of any, worth their weight, they really do care that they deliver for an end client. And I felt I understood service to a client so well that what it meant to really provide value. So I knew we would have like something that I knew the PwC people more than anything wanted to deliver value to those clients they had. Next to them developing their people, that those were like the really two things and that I could. And I also knew they felt they could do better if they had more technology and we did. So there really was a reason, you know, that I could really believe in. So I authentically believed back to that point. And I also felt I had built some of those skills to be able to do that. But I wouldn't call it terrifying, but make no mistake, Lex, it was very hard. And it was, it turned out to be extremely successful. By the time we ended, it was worth 19 a half, well at the time I stepped, I ran it for, oh goodness gracious, quite a long time.

together with people, that ability. So you picked up a lot of challenges. Finally. So during the acquisition, the way you knew the people, it's the right team are the ones that could believe that this consulting business can grow,

can integrate within IBM and all of that. Business can grow, can integrate. Yeah, I was lucky. Look, I did things that helped that. I mean, I knew that people joining us would feel more comfortable if they had people leading it, that they recognized, et cetera. But again, I learned those that didn't then, I eventually had to take some action out. But PWCC had a lot of really dedicated leaders to it.

And I give them a lot of credit. Well, it's amazing to see a thing that kind of start at that very stressful time. And then it turns out to be a success. That's just beautiful to see. So what about the acquisition itself? Is there something interesting to say about the, like what you learned about maybe negotiation?

Because there's a lot of money involved too. Yeah, to me it was a win-win. And we both actually cared the customers got value. So there was this like third thing that had a benefit, not them, not a, there was this third thing. And then next to that.

I like how you think that people would have the wisdom or what it takes to have great negotiation. But yeah, so it's a win-win is one of the ways you can have success.

But it's like obvious, Stephen say that, right? I mean, if you can back to being in service of something, we were both in service to clients. So in and then, you know, I always say when you have an negotiation with someone, okay, both parties always kind of walk away a little bit. Okay, that's good. If they both walk away going, I should have got a little bit more. Okay, but it's okay if I struggling. Okay, they're both a little, little fussy. When one walks away and thinks they did great and the other did horrible, they usually like borne bad. I mean, because they never worked that way. And I've always felt that way with negotiations that you push too far down,

you usually will be sorry you did that. So don't push too far. I mean, that's ultimately what collaboration and empathy means is you're interested in long-term success

of everybody together versus like yours short term. And then you get the discretionary energy from them

versus like, okay, you screwed me here, I'm done, right? So let's even rewind even back.

No, no, oh no.

So do you feel like this is a nostalgia interview? So let me just ask the romantic question. What did you love most about engineering, computer science, electrical engineering? So in those early days,

from your degree to the early work of the market. I love that logic part of it, right? And you do get a sense of completion at some point when you reach certain milestones that, you know, like, yes, it worked or yes, you know, that finite answer to that. So that's what I learned about it.

I loved the problem-solving of it. Computing, what led you down that path? With computing in general,

what made you fall in love with computing in engineering? It's probably that back to that desire why? You know, how things work, right? And so that's like a natural thing, you know, math. I love math for that reason. I always wanted to study, how did that, you know, how did it get that to work kind of thing? So it goes back in that time. But I did start, what I started at Northwestern, I wasn't, I was already in the engineering school. But my first thought was to be a doctor. That was far more noble, that I should be a medical doctor until I could not pass human reproduction as a course. And I thought the irony that I could not, I'm like, I've got all these colored pencils, I gotta get these pictures, this is not working out for me. I'm gonna stick to math.

Engineering, it is, so what I- I'm like, I've got all these colored pencils, I've gotta get these working out for me. I'm gonna stick to math, engineering, it is. So, but after about 10 years, you jumped from the technical role of systems engineer to a management, to a leadership role. Did you miss at that time, the sort of the technical direct contribution

versus being a leader, a manager? That's an interesting point. Like I said, I've always been sort of a doer leader, you know, so. So you never lost that. I never really did. Even, you know, and I think this is really important for today, the best way people learn is experientially, I think. That's being a generalization because there are people who can learn all different ways, right? So I've done things like with my whole team,

they all had to learn how to build cloud applications.

I never really didn't call the code off. And so, you know, I don't care what your job is, write code, you know? And I remember when we were trying to get the company understand AI, we did something called a cognitive jam. Okay, there's a reason we picked the word cognitive by the way, instead of AI, today we use the word AI. It was really symbolic. It was to mean this is to help you think, not replace your thinking. There was so much in the zeitgeist about AI being a bad thing at that time. So that was why we picked a mouthful of a word like cognitive. And it was like, no, no, this is to help you actually. So do what, you know, do what you do better or do something you haven't yet learned. And we did something called the cognitive jam. But the whole point was everyone the company could volunteer, get on a team.

So even as CEO, you try to- Always.

Get your hands dirty a little bit. Chat GPT, I've played, I mean, you still- Yellow. I'm not saying I'm any good at any of it.

Yeah, yellow, yeah. You know, anymore, but-

But to build up in tuition to build up in the state. Yeah, it's that to really understand, right?

And not be afraid of. Yeah. Like we mentioned at the beginning, IBM research has helped catalyze some of the biggest accomplishments in computing and artificial intelligence history. So D-Blue, IBM D-Blue versus Kasparov chess match in 96 and 97, just to ask kind of like what your perception is, what your memory is of it. What is that moment? Like this seminal moment, I believe probably one of the greatest moments in AI history, when the machine first beat a human at a thing,

the humans, machine first, the humans thought- You make a very interesting point, because it is like one of the first demonstrations of using a game to like bring something to people's consciousness, right? And to this day, people use games, right? To demonstrate different things. But at the time, it's funny. I didn't necessarily think of it so much as AI, and I'll tell you why. I was, and I'm not a chess player, you might be a chess player, so I'm not an expert at it. But I think I understand properly of chess, that chess has got a finite number of moves that can be made. Therefore, if it's finite, really what's the demonstration of a supercomputing, right? It's about the amount of time and how fast it can crunch through to find the right move. So in some ways, I thought of it as almost a bigger demonstration of that, but it is absolutely as you said, it was a motivator, one of the big milestones of AI, because it put in your consciousness that it's man in this other machine, right?

I'm doing something, I'm doing something. So you saw it as just a challenging competition problem, and this is a way to demonstrate hardware and software computation at its best. Yes, I did. But the thing is, there is a romantic notion that chess is the embodiment of human intellect. And the intelligence that you can't build a machine that can beat a chess champion in chess

and the fact that it did. So now it's just a computation problem.

Well that's probably required to not be paralyzed the immensity of the task so that this is just solvable but it was a very, very, I think that was a powerful moment just speaking just as an AI person that was that reinvigorated the dream.

You were a little kid back then though right? At that at 95? You have to be like, were you remember it actually at the moment? Yeah, yeah. What did you think at the moment about it?

You have to remember it actually at the moment? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was awe inspiring because especially sort of growing up in the Soviet Union, you think especially of Khair Kasparov and chess, like your intuition is weak about those things. I didn't see it as computation. I thought of it as intelligence because chess for a human being doesn't feel like computation. It feels like some complicated relationship between memory and patterns and intuition and guts and instinct and all of those. If you watch someone play, that's what you would conclude, right? So to see a machine be able to beat a human, I mean you get a little bit of that with Chagipiti now. It's like language was to us humans, the thing that we kind of and surely the poetry of language is something only humans can really have. It's going to be

very difficult to replicate the magic of- Yeah, if you watch someone play, that's what you would

conclude, right? A natural language without deeply understanding language. But it seems like Chagipiti can do some incredible things with language in natural language dialogue. So, but that was the first moment in AI through all the AI winters from the 60s of the promise of the, it was, wow, this is possible for a simple set of algorithms to accomplish something that we think of as intelligence. So that was truly inspiring that maybe intelligence, maybe the human mind is just algorithms. That was the thought at the time. And of course, now the funny thing, what happens is the moment you accomplish it, everyone says, oh, it's just brute force algorithms. It's silly. And this continues every single time you pass a benchmark, a threshold to win a game, people say, oh, well, it's just this. It's just this. It's just this. And that, I think that's funny.

It's just this. It is because I always say it's a reflection of humanity. But I mean, it's taught by what, man, bad stuff in the past, you'll teach it bad stuff for the future, which is why I think efforts to regulate it are a fool's errand. You need to regulate uses, because it's not that technology itself is not inherently good or bad, but how it's used or taught can be good or bad for sure, right? And so that's, to me, will unveil now a whole different way of having to look at technology.

Yeah. What about another magical leap with the early days of Watsonwood beating the Jeopardy challenge? What was your experience like with Watson? What's your vision for Watson in general?

Yeah. And it was really inspired by first chess, right? And Casbroff, and then you come forward in time. And I think what Watson did, because you used a really important word, AI had kind of waxed and waned in these winners, right? In and out, in and out. Popular or not, more money, less money, in and out. Confidence, no confidence. And so I think that was one of the first times it brought to the forefront of people like, whoa, like it humanized it. Because here it is playing against these two gentlemen, and you did lose it first, and then finally won at the end of the day. And what it was doing is making you say, hey, natural language, it's actually understanding natural language. It's one of the first demonstrations of natural language support and a bit of reasoning over lots of data, right? And so that it could have access to a lot of things, come up with a conclusion on it.

that's going to propel it forward. So as part of the suite of tools that you use when you go to

to enterprise and you try to solve different problems. AI for security, AI in automated operations, AI in your robotics, AI on your factory. You know what I mean? It's all part of, and I think, and that's why even to this day, I mean, thousands and thousands of clients of IBM still have the Watson components that it's the AI being used. So it became a platform is how I would say it, right? And an ingredient that went inside, and consultants, like you said, had to learn. I had, they had to learn, don't just put it on something. You got to rethink how that thing should work because with the AI, it could work entirely differently. And so I also felt it could open up and still will open up jobs to a lot of people because more like an assistant, and it could help me be qualified to do something. And we even years ago saw this with the French banks, very unionized, but that idea that you could, in this case, the unions voted for it because it felt people did a better job. And so, and that's just part about being really dedicated

to help it help humanity, not destroy it. Speaking of which, a funny side note, so Kubrick's, the 2001 Space Odyssey, what do you think about, you know,

the fact that HAL 9000 was named after IBM, 2001 Space Odyssey? I really don't think it was. I know there's, I really don't. It could be more fake news. It's more fake news. I have done, I've like researched this, tried to find any evidence and people have talked to you. It wasn't really one letter, it was one letter off.

Off right? I don't think so. I really don't. It could be more fake news. One letter off. So people don't know H is one letter off of I.

A is one letter off of B and then L is one letter off of A is one letter off of. I think that's a solution found afterwards. But here's what I think it more was, I do think it's one of the early demonstrations of evil AI. Yeah.

Like can be taught bad. Yeah. because it's presented as evil in the movie because it hurts, the AI hurts people. But it's a really interesting ethical question because the role of HAL 9000 is to carry out a successful mission. And so the question that is a human question, it's not an AI question, at what price? Humans wage war, they pay very heavy costs for a vision, for a goal of a future that creates a better world. And so that's the question certainly in space. Doctors ask that question all the time, under limited resources could allocate my time

and money and efforts. I agree. Like I said, I've spent a decade talking about this question of AI ethics, right? And that it needs really considerable, not just attention because otherwise it will mirror everything we love and everything we don't love. And again, and that's the beauty in the eye of a holder, right, depending on your culture and everything else. With what you're doing and what you're gonna do, how do you think about it? Do you think about the AI you're going to develop

as having guardrails dictated by some of your beliefs or? Yeah, for sure. So there's so many interesting ways to do this the right way and I don't think anyone has an answer. I tend to believe that transparency is really important. So I think some aspect of your work should be open sourced or at least have an open source competitor that creates kind of forcing function for transparency of how you do things. So the other is I tend to believe, maybe it's because of the podcast and I've just talked to a lot of people,

you should know the people involved.

I agree 100%. As opposed to hide behind a company wall. Sometimes there's a pressure, you have a PR team and you have to care for investors and discussions and so on, let's protect, let's surely not tweet, no, it's like you form this bubble where you have incredible engineers doing fascinating work and also doing work that's difficult complex human questions being answered and we don't know about any of them as a society and so we can't really have that conversation. Even though that conversation would be great for hiring, it would be great for revealing the complexities of what the company is facing. So when the company makes mistakes, you understand that it wasn't a malevolence or half-assideness and the decision-making is just a really hard problem. And so I think transparency is just good for everybody. And I mean, in general, just having a lot of public conversations about this is serious stuff. That AI will have a transformative impact on our society and it might do so very, very quickly through all kinds of ways we're not expecting, which is social media recommendation systems. They at scale have impact on the way we think, on the way we consume news and our growth, like the kind of stuff we consume to grow and learn and become better human beings, all of that. That's all AI. And then obviously the tools that run companies in which we depend, the infrastructure in which we depend, we need to know all about those AI decisions. And it's not as simple as, well, we don't want the AI to say these specific set of bad things.

It's all a giant mess. It is, I mean, you think about it like a knife. A knife can do good and a knife can do bad, okay? You can't, it's very hard. Can't ban knives. You can't ban knives. And that this is, I think back, it was probably 20, I don't know, 15, 16. We did principles of trust and transparency. Notice the word transparency. That belief that with AI, it should be explainable. You should know who taught it. You should know the data that went into training it.

In the end, they won't really trust it. I think a lot of people would like to know, sort of, because a lot of us, I certainly do suffer from imposter syndrome, that self-critical brain. So, you know, taking that big step into leadership, did you at times suffer from imposter syndrome? Like, how did I get here? Do I really belong here? Or did you, were you able to summon the courage

and sort of the confidence to really step up? I think that's very natural for someone. Like, no matter, like the bigger the job gets, you turn and you look to the left and the right and you see people around you and you think, what am I doing here, right? But then you remember what you do. And there's no one else doing it. And so, you get that confidence. So, I do hear a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome, right, and I kind of, actually this past year, I've spent some time helping people on that topic. And part of it starts with, you have to believe you, you have a right to be there like anyone else does, if you've prepared for that moment, you know? And so, it's a bit more of a, I know it's hard to say, like a confidence thing more than anything else. So, yes, there are times I look around, but then I think, wow, I'm in a position to make something change. So, I can't say I have ever really dwelled

on that feeling for long. Okay, so you just focused on the work, I have an opportunity, I'm gonna start popping in.

You know, it's good or bad, you know, it's good or bad,

I just focus on the work, yeah, good or bad, yeah. One important lesson you said you learned from your mom is never let anyone else define you, only you define who you are. So, what's the trajectory, let's say, of your self-definition journey, of you discovering who you are, from having that very difficult upbringing?

You know, they say pivotal moments happen and you don't realize it when they're happening. So, most of my, I feel like most of my self-discovery, it's been like something happens in a year or two or some number later, I look back on it and say, you know, I learned this from that. It's like not in the moment always with me. That could just be how I am. So, I feel like it's been know yourself is a good thing, right, I haven't actually heard you say that on a different podcast, when you ask people questions, you're like, well, it depends, you know, like, know yourself a bit, right?

You know? I tend to know who you are though. There's a lot of things like you said, Nick, for me, there's moods when you're super-self critical, sometimes you're super-confident, and there's many, sometimes you're emotional, sometimes you're cool under pressure. All those are the same human being. Yeah, and I think that's fine. Self-awareness? Yeah, and I think that's fine. That's different. Was there societal expectations and norms regarding gender that you felt in your career? You've spoken to that a little bit, but was there some aspect of that that was constraining,

empowering, or both? You know, I chose to never look at it, okay? Now, whether that is right or wrong, and again, I'm a product of the 70s, and 70s and the 80s, where I think I was surrounded, all the other women around me viewed our way to get ahead was just to work hard. Work hard, work hard, and that was the way you differentiated yourself. And that's obvious it did help. I mean, there's no doubt about it. You're always, you know, you've learned a lot of things, which qualified, opened up another door, opened up another door. I'm very remindful that I have worked for companies that are very steeped in those values of equal opportunity. And so nothing remarkable about that. I mean, when I was a wee kid, I'm taught, hire a diverse team. I get evaluated for it. I get evaluated if my team has built up their skills.

to read it. I say, Well, that's interesting. Do you think you could read it? Oh, yes, fascinating.

It's an interesting reaction. And as here I am 40 years later, that's an interesting reaction, right? And I say, No, the book, I really worked hard to write it for everyone. I just happened to be a woman, right? But there's still that there. And so, look, until I think people see and never feel that they have a, it doesn't even matter whether a woman could be another diverse group that feels it. It's okay to ask those questions. And that's why actually, I'm okay talking about it. Because there were times I felt it, right? There were times in my life on my looks or my weight or my clothing or endless numbers of things that people would comment on, that they would not have commented on if it was someone else. Now, on the other hand, when there's so few of you, and, you know, in there's good and bad, I mean, there's benefit to that too, right? If you do good work, you'll be recognized, it's easier to be recognized.

take away from that, in that journey. It is interesting that, you know, I hear from women that, even on this podcast, when I talk to incredible women like yourself, it is inspiring to young women to hear. I mean, you like to see, you talk to somebody from Turkey and then Turkish people all get excited. It's so true. So you get like somebody that looks like you, somebody that in the category could be tiny or it can be huge. That's just the reality of the world.

It is the reality of the world. And the work I do now to put this group called 110, put 1 million black employees into the middle class without college degrees, get them the right skills, upwardly mobile jobs. So one of my last years, we had been working on, it just did regular leadership session at IBM and had our black colleagues. We're talking about what did it feel like to be a black leader. And here, these are extremely accomplished people. And I can remember very well one telling a story about, look, I felt if I failed or succeeded, it's not just me. It came from a country in Africa. I felt like the whole country is on my shoulder, my success or failure. That's a burden. I mean, I don't feel that burden. Not true. As a woman CEO, I did feel like even the headlines when I was named said, her appointment will either, her success or failure will be a statement for the whole gender kind of thing.

By the way, can I just comment on the fact that you keep asking really hard questions? I'm really honored by it. As a fan of a podcast myself, what I hope is to talk to people like you and to show that you are a fascinating and beautiful human being outside of your actual accomplishments also. So sometimes people are very focused on very specific things about, like you said, science, like what the actual work is, whether it's nuclear fusion or it's GI GPT. I just want to show that it's because I see it at MIT and everywhere. It's just human beings trying their best, they're flawed, but just realizing that all of these very well accomplished people are all the same. And then so then regular people, the young people, they're able to see, I can do this too, I can have a very big impact. Yeah, exactly. It's like we're all kind of plasters. We're all trying to figure out. Do a certain degree. So let me just ask you about family.

talking to you upbringing, but in general, what was your also?

You know, leading a giant company, what was the right place to find a work-life balance for you to have time for family, have time for away from work and be successful?

Yeah. So I had to learn that. And I might've said, you know, you're the only one that can determine your own work-life balance. Companies are innate things. I mean, they will take everything they can from you. And it's not a bad thing. They just will as will bosses. I mean, you give it, they'll take it. And when people ask for, you know, I need roof, I'm like, okay, I had to come with terms with the criminal was me. If I needed that balance, I had to set those boundaries. And so when I comment about a family, because I am in extreme awe of people with children who work, it is a extremely hard thing to do. I watch my siblings.

so you could keep great people in the workforce. So you mentioned your friends with Mayor Barra, the CEO of GM. I didn't mean to name drop. So don't I love her. She's amazing. So I just wanted

to I'm just curious. I didn't mean to name drop. Oh, I love her. She should do your podcast. We'll, we'll make it happen. A great leader. I always, I tell Mary what I think of her is,

I think she's one of the most authentic leaders out there. Most authentic. I always

just very different companies, huge challenges. I worked there first. I remember I worked there first, I remember, right. So I'm very, you know, in some ways I'm very beholden, right. You know, I'm very appreciative of what they did. I mean, Mary and I are circa the same, well, I'm a bit older. So but circa that genre. Do you exchange wisdoms? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, Oh yeah, yeah, when you do anything hard, it takes time and perseverance like we talked about. And you can get that, where do you get the fuel for it?

of fellows every year to do this. Friendship and love is core to this whole thing, not just to success, but just to the whole human condition. Let me ask one last question. Advice for young people. You've had a difficult upbringing, a difficult life, and you've become one of the most successful human beings in history. What advice would you give to young people, or just people in general who are struggling a bit, trying to figure out how they can have a career

they can be proud of, or maybe a life they can be proud of? I feel like a life you can be proud of is just one if you leave something a little bit better. It doesn't have to be big, you know? That's a life well-lived, right? It was Churchill who said, we may, it was how you might remember it better than I, you make a living by what you get, and you live a life by what you give, something to that effect. But my advice would probably, when I'm asked this, I would tell them to ask more questions and give answers. Just focus on being a sponge, and it's funny. I asked my husband the same question the other day. I said, hey, we were talking to somebody, and people were asking this, and he sort of paused for a while, and he said, I tell them patience. I said, what do you mean? And he said, I see so many young people, like they're in such a hurry to somewhere, I don't know where, and that, if they just had patience and let life unfold, I think they may be surprised where they ended up, And actually, I think that's a really good answer,

to be honest, to be honest. Along the way, keep asking questions, keep that childlike curiosity. I know it sounds so easy to say, it's just so, you know. Yeah, like you said, the obvious things, I think they tend to be the most profound. Jeanie, you're an incredible human being, you're an inspiration to so many. Thank you for helping run and contribute to one of the great companies that brings so much good power to the world. And thank you for putting in the hard work of putting it all in the great book. And thank you for talking today. This is a huge honor.

Thank you for doing it. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for doing it.

Oh, you did a lovely job. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jeanie Rometti. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Eleanor Roosevelt. Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized either way. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.