Quote

You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.

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
Lose
Loses
Success
Going
Never
Paranoid
Comfortable

More quotes by 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
I don't want to use the word reorganization. Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Never confuse activity with results.
Lou Gerstner
Image
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
Image
We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.
Lou Gerstner
Image
You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
Lou Gerstner
Image
In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Everything starts with the customer.
Lou Gerstner
Image
I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.
Lou Gerstner
Image
I'm leery of legislative solutions to what is morality.
Lou Gerstner
Image
A lot of people saved IBM. Yes, I was the leader of that team but I could never have done it without a group of IBMers helping me.
Lou Gerstner
Image
For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions
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
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
Visit USA.gov and you'll find thousands of directorates, agencies, boards, offices, and services replete with overlapping responsibilities, ancient priorities, and divided accountability.
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
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
I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The fundamental issue is: In the world of the Internet, is there a place for a packager of services? Does the customer want to go surf the Net and go to every one of 50,000 Web sites? Or will people pay a reasonable amount for somebody to go out and preselect and package what they want? My guess is they will both coexist.
Lou Gerstner