In subsequent years Gerstner's IBM piled on the vision it wasn't supposed to possess.
But my hero is Lou Gerstner, who fibbed to us about the vision thing.
When IBM's board tapped Lou Gerstner for CEO in early 1993, investors expected a quick breakup.
Without Steve Jobs, there would have been no Lou Gerstner to reinvent IBM in the '90s.
Lou Gerstner, a heroic leader with a relentless customer focus, has proven himself a titan.
Look what Gerstner did for a once-insular IBM or Harvey Golub at American Express.
Still, that's what everyone, including IBM's dog-whipped shareholders, imagined Gerstner had really meant by his no-vision statement.
It took an outsider, Lou Gerstner, to unravel six layers of management and put IBM back together.
For example, McKinsey alumni Lou Gerstner and Jeff Skillings both went on to lead large corporations.
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Other prominent grads include General Electric head Jeffrey Immelt, eBay chief John Donahoe and former IBM boss Louis Gerstner.
Well, during his nine years at IBM Gerstner has not disappointed his shareholders.
One of the IBM-ers involved, executive consultant Chris Fickenscher, compares the overhaul with IBM's own remodeling under Louis Gerstner.
Mark Bertolini of Aetna is doing his best imitation of Lou Gerstner, engineer of the complete reinvention of IBM.
In came an outsider, Louis Gerstner, who saw the big trend toward greater user of external services by information technology departments.
Pre-Gerstner IBM kept adding key account sales people in hopes of keeping IT departments from switching out of mainframes to PCs.
When Gerstner left IBM, it was still a big lumbering hierarchical bureaucracy.
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With his background in consulting and finance--all brains and no soul, apparently--Gerstner looked like a bad bet to stick around for long.
GoldenSource was a division of International Business Machines (IBM) that former CEO Lou Gerstner divested in 1994 to refocus and raise cash.
"It said bureaucracy, " said Gerstner, recalling the 1950s building that Armonk replaced.
"We had a miniscule number of people getting stock options, " says Gerstner.
The market IBM entered to save itself, and make Mr. Gerstner famous, was no longer capable of keeping IBM a profitably growing concern.
We don't count founders' stock and we don't count successful executives who have built their wealth over a longer period--like Louis Gerstner Jr.
Louis Gerstner Jr. took over an ailing IBM five years ago and axed 32, 000 jobs but kept in place most of the top team.
And sure there have been successful non-technical leaders (take Lou Gerstner at IBM) who came on board at a technology company and achieved great things.
Such analysis ignores the greater force of Louis Gerstner, the CEO.
But where Gerstner faked out everybody is on the vision thing.
Starting in 1993 when Lou Gerstner joined IBM and kept the company intact he embarked on a series of strategic moves to increase its services focus.
If one thing sums up IBM's transformation under Gerstner, who stepped down in 2002, it is the company's architectural award-winning new headquarters at Armonk, New York.
But the rewards for those who survived justified Gerstner's heavy-handedness.
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