Leading the Way
Three Truths from the Top Companies for Leaders
Chapter One
The Looming Leadership Crisis
Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like
anything else, through hard work.
-Vince Lombardi
Surveying the crowd at the first meeting of IBM's Senior Leadership
Group in 1996, Lou Gerstner, the blunt-talking chief executive charged
with saving Big Blue from the brink, issued an edict: Go back to school! The
directive must have surprised and likely angered more than a few of the 300
senior executives-including Gerstner's own direct reports-many of whom
had been with the tech giant for decades.
But Gerstner hadn't been recruited from R. J. R. Nabisco to make friends.
His immediate challenge was to save an institution that had quite literally
been placed on a 24-hour deathwatch. Those in the room that day understood
they had been hand selected because they were critical to IBM's recovery. So,
when Gerstner told them they would be participating i ... read full excerpt from Leading the Way: Three Truths from the Top Companies for Leaders ebook
