Quote

If the practices and processes inside a company don't drive the execution of values, then people don't get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them?

Lou Gerstner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lou Gerstner
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 1
Business Executive
Businessperson
Mineola
New York
Values
Behavior
Demonstrates
Process
Leadership
Practices
Culture
Inside
Processes
Action
Question
Engagement
Really
System
Execution
People
Create
Reward
Company
Rewards
Practice
Drive
Adhere

More quotes by Lou Gerstner

Image
Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.
Lou Gerstner
Image
We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.
Lou Gerstner
Image
You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
Lou Gerstner
Image
If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.
Lou Gerstner
Image
My parents worked enormously hard to put four children through college. We didn't have a lot of money.
Lou Gerstner
Image
If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM's case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn't make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn't make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.
Lou Gerstner
Image
You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Never confuse activity with results.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.
Lou Gerstner
Image
I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.
Lou Gerstner
Image
We do not need Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education we need a single Department of Skills that will promote an integrated approach to global competitiveness.
Lou Gerstner
Image
In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Every now and then, a technology comes along that is so profound, so powerful, so universal, that its impact will change everything. It will transform every institution in the world. It will create winners and losers, will change the way we do business, the way we teach our children, communicate and interact as individuals.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.
Lou Gerstner
Image
I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.
Lou Gerstner
Image
You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees.
Lou Gerstner