Good Power with Ginni Rometty // The American Story

David, thank you, and it's a pleasure to be with you again.

Oh, I definitely thought a woman could be the CEO of IBM. I did not think it would be me. I didn't even think about that back then. So just for the audience to get a little bit of background, I joined IBM in 1981, but I went to college in the '70s. So, long time ago.

As I look back in my tenure, it was probably the most tumultuous time of IBM in its history, because you know all the new companies you didn't know more than a decade ago. So whether it was Google, Amazon, et cetera, Facebook out there. So what I am most proud about is I feel what I ended up being was the transition CEO, to take the company from a point where it was not prepared for the future, to give it a foundation that it can grow again.

Yeah, I think it is, and it only has been growing, done nicely. It's positioned back to, I think, what its soul is, which is about doing really mission-critical work. And it's one of the big lessons I talk about in here, that when you have such intense competition, everybody thinks you should become something else immediately, like entirely different. And I sort of learned in that process that an equally important question to ask is what should endure, even if it should be modernized. And so therefore, I think now, they're very centered on who they are.

When I reflect back now, the biggest thing I thought about was, 'Well, look, we gotta get ready for this future, 'cause this has already taken off. There have been people building a Cloud for 10 years.' And we had not yet done that. New buyers, new models, new platform, and my first choice was to start working on the 'what we did,' the building of what, right? So to move to the Cloud, move to AI. But the punch line is, what I would soon learn, is that how people work would be just as important as what they did. And I would soon learn that that would be my bigger challenge, which would be to put speed, consumerism, to change the skills that would become the major job.

'60s and seven...

Yep.

Yeah, 90 days of receivership.

Almost 10 years.

Yes.

What's your next question? You said three. What's your next one?

Maybe I'll answer them as a group.

Okay.

And the third question?

You're wondering how IBM is still here even now. Go ahead.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, I will give an uber theme to them.

All right? So, that's a good history lesson. And the first two, of course, I wasn't around in those days. But what I think they're both indicative of, whether it was PCs, or whether it was the operating system, is that they were really consumer businesses. And at IBM's heart, it's not a consumer company. There's a different tempo to a consumer company in how it works and how it operates, and more fashion to it, as it is. And we were used to just really super hard, big problems behind the scenes. I always say it's kind of like the iceberg, and it's what's below the water that you never see that keeps things running. The third one though, that's like a famous lesson of technology, which is, if you miss a trend, it is really hard to recover till the next one. And in that case, go back in 2012, really, IBM had been succeeding on a model of globalization, really capitalizing on, 'Hey, if you are in all these countries, you can really grow by just global expansion.' Think of China opening up a city every other week, we'd open a branch there. But while that was going on, that cloud was being built in another place. And so that's why that's a lesson in, you gotta really be careful not to miss a trend, 'cause then it takes another generation to catch up.

The story, what he's talking about is, my little nephew was under five, just as David described it, and I had just become CEO, so it was just right, or I was about to, it would've been January 1st. And the little guy, he takes a picture of a deer out in the yard. And he runs back, and my sister did not think he should have an iPad, by the way. I shoulda said that. She said he's too young. And he had given her this beautiful pottery thing he made her. He took it right outta her lap and gave it to me, right? And so he was, I was like, 'Okay.' But, in that moment, I said to myself, 'Okay, these same people go to work the next day. And when they go to work, if everything they touch is cumbersome, and hard, and read a thousand-page manual, like, this isn't the world. Like, you aren't gonna separate your home life from your work life from what you expect.' And it was in that moment that I really, you know, there were others, but that was one that really kinda watershed to me, it was like, 'I gotta now, somehow, bring consumerism into a company that's not a consumer company.'

Yeah. There's a reason that I talk about some things like this in the book, 'cause some people say that's a very personal decision. And many people have made many assumptions for why I do or don't have children. The book starts, and David knows my family history well, but it starts with my story of my mother, when my father leaves our family. And I'm 16, and he says to my mother, I happen to walk in the garage, and he's in there talking to my mother, and he says to her, 'Look, I really don't care what happens to you or the children. I don't care. I'm out of here. You can go work in the street, for all I care.' And I hear it. I'm standing there. He doesn't see me. And I watch my mother in that moment, and this will get back to children, and she didn't cry, she didn't do anything. But my mom was 32, four kids, never worked a day outside our home, and only had gone to high school. And when I was born, she was a child having a child. And so we immediately, we're gonna lose the house, had no money, had no food, she had to go on food stamps, federal aid, but what I watched was, little by little, then she said, 'Well, I'm gonna go to work, you watch the kids. You watch your brothers and sisters.' And then, a little better job, little more, 'Now I'm going to go to school a little bit,' and community college, she never did get a degree. But the jobs got a little better and a little better, and it was enough that, okay, 'cause she was so embarrassed by food stamps and all that started to stop. She could do it. And my mom will say the reason I didn't have children is that I had my children, with my sisters. And I never hated it. I mean, they would behave because they knew, they were like, 'We can't cause our mother more trouble.' So we all had to be good. And so now, the reason I write about it in the book is many people will say, 'Well, to do what you do, you cannot have children,' right? As if I made that decision because I had a career, right? And that was never the reason. So I decided it was worth talking about, and so I write and say, 'Please don't make that decision based on whether or not you think you could ever do these jobs.' You have to work for a company that has values and flexibility and things like that, we can come back to it, but the most important thing you have to have a support system of some kind. So I don't deny that part, right? And I don't deny that, I always say, like, I have great empathy for the people with kids because this is a math equation. If you don't have them, yes, it's less emotional, and it's less hours. I mean, that's just math. And so therefore, I could watch my sisters, my brother, I have great empathy for my people that did have kids, right, 'cause of that pull. So it was a little longer answer, but it was a context that, in the beginning of the book, I talk a lot about my upbringing and what it meant. By the way, my mom taught me, like, don't ever let someone else define you. That's what we watched, by watching my mom.

Three others, yep.

A brother and two sisters.

It is, but I, this is a part I really like, I hope I can inspire the, as I say, the book's written in something called 'the power of me, the power of we, and the power of us.' And in that beginning, the reason I told you the story of my mom, and I'll get to Northwestern, was I felt like my mom showed us she had power when she had absolutely nothing else, and she had a power to change something. But anyways, back to your point: how'd I get into Northwestern? 'Cause I didn't have a dime of money, right? And, but, and this is the point about communities, and I try to talk a lot about teachers, communities, I mean, it was, like, a million teachers that would go, 'Hey, apply for this little scholarship. It's, like, $50.' 'Apply for this one, it's $500.' And then I said, 'Where can I go to college?' I look on a map, I say, 'Well, I know I can get to a state school, University of Illinois. I'm pretty sure.' Then I look on a map, I say, 'What other good schools around here?' This is all there was to it. Two schools. I go, 'Northwestern.' University of Chicago, no way. And I say, 'Okay,' and Northwestern has a policy that if you can get in academically, they will find you the money. So I apply, and lo and behold, I get in. You know, this was to my shock and surprise. And then a professor, by the grace of God, says to me one day, 'Hey, look, there's this company called General Motors, and they are,' and this is a very interesting point about the policies of the '70s, the '80s, 'and they really are looking to bring more women, underrepresented groups, into the companies. They're gonna pick two people at 10 Ivy League schools and give them a completely full scholarship.' And he said, 'I really think you should go to the interview.' And I'm like, 'No, I can't get that.' 'No, no, you really should go.' And I would get that scholarship from General Motors, who would then pay the rest of my education. Now, they no longer offer these programs like this anymore. They paid it, I worked there in the summers, which is where I would meet my husband. They would salary me and then give me tenure, you know, if I went to work. And that is why I went to work there, because I felt such loyalty. I did not have to; it was a no strings attached deal. But I felt so much loyalty to them, I started there.

My husband.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. IBM decides to go into consulting, doesn't have any consulting business, and hires a bunch of people from the outside, and then says, 'A few of you from the inside better come here and help these people.' And I got asked if I would work for them and help start it and the rest would become history.

I would eventually build that business to $20 billion.

Yeah, I was. There had been five mergers before that, that had all failed in consulting. Because consultants, when you put together two consulting groups... IBM did have consultants, they were technical. These would be business people, and these are really hard to put together. And I just went to help with the negotiation. I didn't think that was what I was gonna be doing, and in that process, it was really the PWC folks who said, 'No, no. We would like her to lead this.'

It was successful at pieces, but it certainly wasn't making some of the targets the IBM company had set for it, that's a fact.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. I ran all of sales and marketing for the company, yeah.

No, not really. So probably the most valuable lesson on career pivots, is what you're talking about, all these pivots, that I ever learned was a couple jobs before that. Because every job I ever took, I fretted. And I don't think I'm atypical to a lot of women on this, maybe men, too, but I would fret and fret about everything I could not do. And I got offered a very large job right before I took on that combined merger, and the person said to me, 'Hey, I'm gonna take a new job, and I think you should take mine.' And I said to him, 'Oh, man. I am not ready. I can do, like, a third of your job. Two more years, they should come back to me.' And he said, 'Nah, I think you should go to the interview.' I went to the interview, and the next day, I got offered the job. But my reaction was, I said, 'I would like to go home and talk to my husband. I am not sure.' He said, 'Okay, go ahead.' I went home, my husband's name is Mark, and I went on and on about why I didn't think I can do it, and what I needed to know better and learn, and he said to me, 'Ginni, do you think a man would've answered that question that way?' I said, 'No.' And he says, 'Not that it's gender.' He's like, 'I know you. You, okay, every new job, you gotta learn things. But then you're gonna know them.' And in that moment, David, which is meaningful to all your questions after, to me, it would crystallize this thought that growth and comfort will never coexist, and that I had to get used to that. That if I was gonna grow, I had to get used to that, 'Hey, these are gonna, I am gonna feel horrible, and so nervous.' I would learn, okay, you might feel that on the inside, you don't have to show it on the outside. Because when I went back the next day and took the job, the fella says to me, he looks at me and he goes, 'Don't do that again.' I got it. I understood, and I would start to equate learning with feeling at risk. And it's a really good thing to do for anybody, I think, because you're like, 'Mmm, if I'm not nervous about something, I must not be learning anything.' And you continue to then put yourself in positions of more uncertainty, or learning of something, and to me, it's been like a lifelong lesson. So that took me into those other jobs more than anything.

You know... Isn't that...

We had lots of great candidates, and I think, after I'd done PWC, I certainly had an idea, 'cause it had been so hard, and then to finally succeed. And it was well over 100,000 people. I thought, 'Mm-kay, I can do something this scale, so maybe I'm qualified to at least be considered one day.' But everyone just did their job. And there were other very qualified candidates.

Yeah. It would be one of the things I would learn. And it was extremely hard because shareholders. There were many, and important ones, who believed very strongly in that model. But I think we all know now, I was then faced with a case of, I had to prepare the company for the future, and if I did, I didn't have money to do both. And so I would have to take us off of these things. It was called a roadmap. And I talk about it as recognizing the inhibitors that are there, and that idea of making decisions for the long-term, I knew that would cause great pain to many. And, but we did, 'cause I needed the money to move us to AI, to move us to a hybrid cloud, to take us to the future, to do the re-skilling; there was no way you could do both of those, and that was the choice I made to preserve the company.

I would try in two ways and learn two valuable lessons. One would be, at some point, I took an inventory, we had two out of 10 people had the skills for the future. That's, they had great skills for the past, but not the future. So we had a really big skilling job. So one idea was, go hire lots of people from the outside, and that taught me a valuable lesson. When you hire people that know just something, or something very particular, and many new technologies, the Cloud, they came in and they're like, 'Oh, let me show the rest of you how this should be done.' They didn't realize what it was like to run mission-critical systems that run your banks, that run the healthcare system, that run airplanes, and some, they made big mistakes. And what I watched transpire was, who actually was doing well here, didn't matter if they were a current employee or somebody new, it was who was willing to learn the other side, and that propensity to learn would now start to really fuel my brain about how to hire. And then the other big thing that happened, and it kinda takes me into the power of us, was, it was 2012, couldn't find anybody to hire in cyber. It was a new industry. And I serendipitously walk into another meeting on corporate social responsibility. And the team is telling me about a single high school in Brooklyn, in a very poor area, that they're working with a community college, and we've given these some curriculum help, some mentors, we've given them a chance at internships, and said, 'Oh, if we have some jobs, we'll hire you. You'll have an associate degree in parallel with your dual enrollment with your high school.' And I walk in one school and they said, 'We're doing this, looking good. We're gonna hire a few people.' I said, 'Mmm, okay. This sounds good.' Come back a year later, I say, 'Hey, how many of those people did we hire?' Still can't find cyber people, unemployment's almost 10%. And they say, 'Oh, like, eight.' I'm like, 'How come?' They say, 'Well, we only hire college graduates and PhDs. 95% of every job we have is that.' I said, 'Those kids are doing really well. I don't get it.' And they've obviously proven, and by the way, many of them were going back to college, they're doing all sorts of things. And it starts this thought in my head, wow, one more time, access and aptitude are two different things. And we would go down a journey, thank goodness I had a team that believed it with me. Because the first reaction from the workforce was, 'You're gonna dumb us down if you bring in people that don't have a four year degree yet.' And I would then say, 'Well,' they're engineers, 'Let's start gathering data on this topic.' And we would prove that, for about the first 12 months, they may not be quite as good performers, but after that, equal or better. More retentive, more loyal, take more education. Now what is exactly wrong in 95% Black and Hispanic? Tell me what's wrong with this equation. I have found a new talent pool, in my view. I would then make a crusade out of this. And today, 50% require college degree. The other 50 do not, to get started. And around the world, those little schools, there's, in 30 countries, 300 schools, 150,000 kids. It's just one pathway, then there's apprenticeships, all these other things. And it has been, to me, the most moving, rewarding, we ended up calling it 'Skills First.' Hire people for skills versus degrees. And hire for people's willingness to learn, because you know what? Like, especially in tech, it's gonna change every three to five years, so it really doesn't matter what you know today. And then on the very unfortunate situation, if you don't mind, I'll just jump to Ken, I'm looking right at him, on the heels of the murder of George Floyd, so time would go on, I'd be really moving on this thing about Skills First. Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault and others, you know, I think, Ken, you said a very profound thing at that moment, as business was reacting and saying what could it do, Ken said we should do what business does best, and we should hire people. Economic opportunity is the greatest sense of dignity. I agree with, it's the greatest equalizer. Look at my background. And I thought to myself, 'They got a great vision, I have an idea how.' This idea of 'Skills First.' And as I always say to Ken, he's the visionary, I am the plumber. And so together, we make a good pair. And that is how 'OneTen' got formed. But I feel like this is one of the things that democracy depends on: that people feel they have a better future. If they don't, you work so hard in this area... I mean, you preserve so many of our institutions that you personally fund. But if people don't think there's a better future they're gonna vote for other things, right? And to me, a job, dignity, raising a family is the way to do that.

Yeah.

It is to place one million Black employees into the middle class over 10 years, who do not have a college degree, but do have proper skills. And we get them skills. And it's really important to recognize that you might know the answer to this. What percentage of Americans don't have a college degree?

Larger than you think.

It's 65. And it's 80% for Black Americans. These are astounding numbers. And if you wonder why people feel they've been left out, it's because they have been left out. So that's our work, and it's to get all of our buddies, which Ken and I and the others, founder, co-founders, all worked hard to get many of the big companies in the country to sign up, which they did, to a long-term journey, which is difficult, to change their hiring practices. And then in parallel, we're working with getting people to provide the programs that give people these skills that match up with what demand is in the market.

Thank you, David.

Thank you very much. Thank you for everybody else here.