netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Leadership Style at International Business Machines (IBM) : International Business Machines (IBM) (NYSE: IBM) is an American multinational technology and consulting firm headquartered in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.[2]
The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company.[3][4] CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue.
In 2010, IBM was ranked the 20th largest firm in the U.S. by Fortune and the 33rd largest globally by Forbes.[5][6] Other rankings that year include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #3 green company (Newsweek), #15 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).[7] IBM employs almost 400,000 employees (sometimes referred to as "IBMers") in over 200 countries, with occupations including scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals.[8]
IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide.[9] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[10] The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002) and spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991).
Sam Palmisano
IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano opened the forum by observing that innovation is an imperative for anyone wanting to differentiate their companies and avoid competing solely on costs in a crowded, commoditized marketplace. He talked about some of the powerful forces driving innovation in business. First, he told the audience that one unavoidable fact of which all should be aware is that globalization is inevitable and that the world as a result is becoming more integrated. He then linked globalization to economic expansion and, in particular, to the growing percentage of worldwide GDP coming from emerging markets -- especially China and India where a young, vibrant, talented set of professionals is eagerly entering the global economy.
Sam then talked about the unpredictable environment we have been living in for the past few years, and the difficulty in planning due to the rate and pace of change inspired by geopolitical and security issues, economic fluctuations, market bubbles and what have you. As a result, business models are being furiously challenged by world events beyond their control and occurring anywhere, which in today's integrated environment will have a rippling effect across the globe.
In such an environment, Sam went on to say, a business has only a couple of choices. It can hunker down and try to ride out the changes, hoping things will return to the more stable world of the past; or it can create a strategy and a set of business models that allow the business to thrive and be successful in the face of the realities of this emerging world -- in other words, embrace innovation across the business.
It was at a client meeting in San Francisco in October 2002 that Sam Palmisano, IBM's new CEO, first unveiled the initiative he hoped would transform his company. His idea: The Internet really did change everything (the crash of the New Economy notwithstanding). In a hyperconnected world, IBM's clients needed to become "on-demand" companies, their every business process exquisitely calibrated to respond instantly to whatever got thrown at them. And to help them, IBM would have to do exactly the same thing.
When she heard about the new strategy, Donna Riley, IBM's vice president of global talent, remembers wondering whether the company had the right managers for its new direction. "If leadership is stuck in the past, and the business has changed, we have a problem," she says. By the spring of 2003, Palmisano and his leadership development team realized the strategy would indeed demand a new breed of boss -- leaders who were as sensitive to changes in their environment as Indian scouts.
For help, Riley turned to the Hay Group, a consultancy that specializes in executive development. Hay had done work for IBM before, most notably in 1994 when, at former CEO Lou Gerstner's behest, the firm had interviewed a group of the company's top managers. As part of his turnaround strategy for the troubled company, Gerstner wanted to develop a new style of leader who could help transform its failed culture. Ultimately, Hay distilled 11 competencies from the interviews that would guide IBMers' performance as they pulled off one of the most remarkable corporate rebounds in history.
In the summer of 2003, Hay Group returned to conduct another set of interviews with 33 executives who had been identified as outstanding leaders in the new on-demand era -- the folks who really got the new strategy and who were on the cutting edge in a high-performance culture. They were drawn from every division of the business, every part of the world, united by their extraordinary ability to get the job done. The plan was to put these top players under a microscope, to divine how they thought about their jobs and the company; how they interacted with clients, peers, and subordinates; how they set goals and went about meeting them -- in short, to extract the best practices from the best leaders to see if they could be duplicated.
In a series of three-and-a-half-hour interviews, the managers discussed circumstances in which they had been successful -- or not. The interviews were supplemented by surveys of the people they worked with. Researchers then combed through the stories and accompanying data, looking for characteristics and qualities that distinguished these high performers.
The results were stunning. "The experts predicted maybe a third of the competencies would be the same, a third would be slightly different, and a third would be brand new," says Riley. "Much to their surprise -- and ours -- we found it truly is a new book," requiring all new skills.
To begin with, the best executives no longer thought of the folks to whom they sold stuff as customers; they saw them as clients. The difference? "A customer is transactional," says Harris Ginsberg, IBM's director of global executive and organization capability. "A client is somebody with whom you have a longstanding relationship and a personal investment." It's no longer enough to sell a customer a server. An IBMer should be so focused on becoming a long-term trusted partner that she might even discourage a client from buying some new piece of hardware if it's in the client's best interest to hold off.
The 33 leaders were also adept at a skill IBM calls "collaborative influence." In a highly complex world, where multiple groups might need to unite to solve a client's problems, old-style siloed thinking just won't cut it, and command-and-control leadership doesn't work. "It's really about winning hearts and minds -- and getting people whose pay you don't control to do stuff," says Mary Fontaine, vice president and general manager of Hay's McClelland Center for Research and Innovation.
For example, Frank Squillante, an IBM vice president, has only four direct reports. To do his job -- devising the strategy for the company's intranet, and then developing and deploying applications for 325,000 people and 100,000 business partners -- he must be a master at cajoling people over whom he has no real power. "I use 'collaborative influence' every minute of every day," he says. "If I tried to pull one of these, 'I'm in charge so you have to do this' maneuvers, the whole thing would break down."
The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company.[3][4] CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue.
In 2010, IBM was ranked the 20th largest firm in the U.S. by Fortune and the 33rd largest globally by Forbes.[5][6] Other rankings that year include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #3 green company (Newsweek), #15 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).[7] IBM employs almost 400,000 employees (sometimes referred to as "IBMers") in over 200 countries, with occupations including scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals.[8]
IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide.[9] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[10] The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002) and spinning off companies like Lexmark (1991).
Sam Palmisano
IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano opened the forum by observing that innovation is an imperative for anyone wanting to differentiate their companies and avoid competing solely on costs in a crowded, commoditized marketplace. He talked about some of the powerful forces driving innovation in business. First, he told the audience that one unavoidable fact of which all should be aware is that globalization is inevitable and that the world as a result is becoming more integrated. He then linked globalization to economic expansion and, in particular, to the growing percentage of worldwide GDP coming from emerging markets -- especially China and India where a young, vibrant, talented set of professionals is eagerly entering the global economy.
Sam then talked about the unpredictable environment we have been living in for the past few years, and the difficulty in planning due to the rate and pace of change inspired by geopolitical and security issues, economic fluctuations, market bubbles and what have you. As a result, business models are being furiously challenged by world events beyond their control and occurring anywhere, which in today's integrated environment will have a rippling effect across the globe.
In such an environment, Sam went on to say, a business has only a couple of choices. It can hunker down and try to ride out the changes, hoping things will return to the more stable world of the past; or it can create a strategy and a set of business models that allow the business to thrive and be successful in the face of the realities of this emerging world -- in other words, embrace innovation across the business.
It was at a client meeting in San Francisco in October 2002 that Sam Palmisano, IBM's new CEO, first unveiled the initiative he hoped would transform his company. His idea: The Internet really did change everything (the crash of the New Economy notwithstanding). In a hyperconnected world, IBM's clients needed to become "on-demand" companies, their every business process exquisitely calibrated to respond instantly to whatever got thrown at them. And to help them, IBM would have to do exactly the same thing.
When she heard about the new strategy, Donna Riley, IBM's vice president of global talent, remembers wondering whether the company had the right managers for its new direction. "If leadership is stuck in the past, and the business has changed, we have a problem," she says. By the spring of 2003, Palmisano and his leadership development team realized the strategy would indeed demand a new breed of boss -- leaders who were as sensitive to changes in their environment as Indian scouts.
For help, Riley turned to the Hay Group, a consultancy that specializes in executive development. Hay had done work for IBM before, most notably in 1994 when, at former CEO Lou Gerstner's behest, the firm had interviewed a group of the company's top managers. As part of his turnaround strategy for the troubled company, Gerstner wanted to develop a new style of leader who could help transform its failed culture. Ultimately, Hay distilled 11 competencies from the interviews that would guide IBMers' performance as they pulled off one of the most remarkable corporate rebounds in history.
In the summer of 2003, Hay Group returned to conduct another set of interviews with 33 executives who had been identified as outstanding leaders in the new on-demand era -- the folks who really got the new strategy and who were on the cutting edge in a high-performance culture. They were drawn from every division of the business, every part of the world, united by their extraordinary ability to get the job done. The plan was to put these top players under a microscope, to divine how they thought about their jobs and the company; how they interacted with clients, peers, and subordinates; how they set goals and went about meeting them -- in short, to extract the best practices from the best leaders to see if they could be duplicated.
In a series of three-and-a-half-hour interviews, the managers discussed circumstances in which they had been successful -- or not. The interviews were supplemented by surveys of the people they worked with. Researchers then combed through the stories and accompanying data, looking for characteristics and qualities that distinguished these high performers.
The results were stunning. "The experts predicted maybe a third of the competencies would be the same, a third would be slightly different, and a third would be brand new," says Riley. "Much to their surprise -- and ours -- we found it truly is a new book," requiring all new skills.
To begin with, the best executives no longer thought of the folks to whom they sold stuff as customers; they saw them as clients. The difference? "A customer is transactional," says Harris Ginsberg, IBM's director of global executive and organization capability. "A client is somebody with whom you have a longstanding relationship and a personal investment." It's no longer enough to sell a customer a server. An IBMer should be so focused on becoming a long-term trusted partner that she might even discourage a client from buying some new piece of hardware if it's in the client's best interest to hold off.
The 33 leaders were also adept at a skill IBM calls "collaborative influence." In a highly complex world, where multiple groups might need to unite to solve a client's problems, old-style siloed thinking just won't cut it, and command-and-control leadership doesn't work. "It's really about winning hearts and minds -- and getting people whose pay you don't control to do stuff," says Mary Fontaine, vice president and general manager of Hay's McClelland Center for Research and Innovation.
For example, Frank Squillante, an IBM vice president, has only four direct reports. To do his job -- devising the strategy for the company's intranet, and then developing and deploying applications for 325,000 people and 100,000 business partners -- he must be a master at cajoling people over whom he has no real power. "I use 'collaborative influence' every minute of every day," he says. "If I tried to pull one of these, 'I'm in charge so you have to do this' maneuvers, the whole thing would break down."
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