Who Says Elephants Can't Dance

http://tinyurl.com/reviewIBMRevived
IBM Revived
How did Louis managed make IBM dance

The Book is : Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? - Louis V. Gerstner

Summary:

A book on IBM's historic turnaround. How Louis led this historic revival is what this book is all about. For ages IBM has been evolved into an IT behemoth, which the author Louis has pen named it as an ELEPHANT. It tells each ad everything what should be done with some don’ts too. Also he gives some management mantras which may be learned, understood and followed.

Detailed:

Say you have a habit of watching morning news. Imagine, one fine day, you wake up and switch ON the Television, to your surprise you get to see a BREAKING NEWS. The news is about TATA declaring bankruptcy. Not only for you but for the whole population of India, it will be shocking news. You will wonder, what unavoidable/uncontrollable circumstances might have occurred which led the company to these decision. Here comes the role of turning around a company from it entering to the so called "Grave". Also imagine what it would take to revive a company like TATA.

One of the biggest disadvantages in turnaround "The Making" is lots and lots of people have to give sacrifice. The direct effect of this sacrifice is reducing the number of employee. This is because to cut costs, which is the best way to start reviving a company, first step is always reduce the employee strength. Cost cutting is needed, because it’s impossible to make profits. Now this is not only because of these low - level employees. Always organization is a group effort. But to be precise it is the management failure that consumes the major chunk for the company failure. Still the employee cut outs are faced by lower level employees. This is just to reduce the number, not on the basis of talent. We can say this is a sacrifice by the people. This is what hurts me more, isn't there any way to avoid such kind of lay offs.'

See a book, is a book. It is men’s best friend. Reading a book always add to our knowledge. If not it at least improves our Language competency. So according to me the intended audience for the book is anybody. But if you really ask me, there are two category of audience

1 - People who had spent some amount of time in the industry, and have reached the top management positions

2 - People who are IT freaks, wannabe MBAs, for them it is quite an inspirational and motivational book.

For every organization, there comes a time for struggle. But what differentiates IBM is the level and the size of the company. People often think how such companies with great people are unable to survive. But when the company is this large, you sitting at the top do not even see the half of its structure. Here comes the role of good people. The main job of a CEO, which is very much analogous to a LEADER, is to hold all the people tightly.

Once we set a goal for the company, always we should set our vision/ vision statement first. Once the vision is decided, this ideology should be percolated in the entire company. People should work as if they are the only one, OR, say that they are running their own business. One should not forget, "SEA is made up of DROPS". But for all these the leader should him/herself implement the ideology. Management is all about managing people, as it is rightly said by APJ Abdul Kalam (current president of INDIA).

This book is nothing but a story of IBM redux. But the way it is written down is excellent. It is not written as a story. But it is written as it would be a case study or a text book for a subject. Lou being having a great corporate experience was the best candidate for the job, and he uncertainly fulfilled everybody's expectation.

The chapters are very well categorized and named under PARTS. Here he after summing up, precisely, the revival of IBM, without much detail, tells what lessons he himself have learned. Also described is what observations he have concluded from his journey, which is the best part of the book. Because we need not have to derive anything from the book, the author himself has given the points. This book proves that it’s the industry experience that matters more, than the technical know how. Also management is the life of a company. Lou was not at all from IT background, yet he succeeded.

The book is being carved up into 5 Parts:

First part GRABBING HOLD contains 11 chapters. It basically tells his initial time at IBM. How did he manage himself in a technology company? How did he understood the basic of business for this vertical? How did he make all those decisions?

Second is STRATEGY. It has 8 chapters. He starts with giving a brief introduction for IBM. He tells how he changed the focus of IBM to services. Who all helped him to take this drastic change? Since software industry has already become huge in size, and IBM being the major contributor, its tough at times to change people's state of mind.

Third is CULTURE. It has total of 3 chapters. I think this is the most important part of all. It is the culture that plays a stellar role. We always distinguish among people on their culture. We like to be with people of better and rich cultural background. Same thing goes for an organization. It is the culture, the vision that makes up a company. Also Lou suggests that the cultural development should be Inside-Out. Here inside-out means the nourishment of culture should not only be influenced from past internal experience, but also from past external change.

Fourth part deals with LESSONS that Gurstner learned during his term of office. It has 4 chapters. Here I can bet that the lessons learned can be applied in a broader perspective for any industry. It is just the personal touch and experience that differs. If only you can decipher that, all people learn the same lessons again and again, even if they try to utilize someone else's experience. The main core reflects only one thing; we should not stick to same policies to run a business. The policies decided should be highly adaptive according to the marketable changes.

Last but not the least, it discusses about OBSERVATIONS about the industry. The industry, the system, the watchers etc...


Lou's work experience before IBM in that order:
McKinsey and Company: 9 years
American Express: 11 years
RJR Nabisco: 4 years
IBM

Some Excerpts:

01. People do what you inspect, not what you expect.
02. Getting it done, getting it done right, getting it done better than the next person is far more important than dreaming up new visions of the future.
03. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
04. In short, business with high-performance cultures are winners and no person of substance would work an.

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