Ginni Rometty, Former Chairman and CEO, IBM; Co-chair, OneTen; Author, Good Power (Virtual)
Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Good Power: Leading Positive Change 

Conferences

For this next session. We're so excited to be joined virtually by someone who has graced the top of Fortune's most powerful women list for multiple years. And former chairman and CEO of IVM Ginia Ratti, since her retirement from IBM Rometty has spent the last few years joining the boards of companies like JP Morgan Cargill and the Brookings Institution. She is also the co chairman for 1 10, an organization focused on closing the opportunity gap for Black talent. And if that's not enough, she's recently written a book entitled Good Power, Leading Positive Change in our Lives. Work and World. She'll be interviewed by Fortune's editor at large, Mihal Levron. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage. Right, Jenny. Hello, are you there, Jenny? There you are. Um It's great to see you. Um I am going to start with a little bit of a long winded question for you. So bear with me and audience, bear with me. But um I first met you nearly 10 years ago. I profiled you in Fortune and I remember walking down the hallway at I B M headquarters in with you and there's this great series of gold framed portraits of I B MS CEO S, all of your predecessors at the time. Um All male. There are quite a few because I B M has been around for more than 100 years. And now there's a portrait of you in that hallway and I know you didn't set out with your career to shatter ceilings necessarily, but you did. And so I'm just curious, what did that unveiling feel like? What did it mean to you? Uh Well, since the time, well, first I should thank you for having me. And also just to comment to the last panel which I got to listen to. I thought the women did a great job. They were both introspective and practical in their comments. So allow me to say it and that no disrespect. I'm not there in person. I've crisscrossed the country three times this week, so I just couldn't do it. I'm getting old. So uh here I am now, pursue that point. Um It was funny, I went back for the portrait veiling, you know, it takes a while and some people think that's a corny uh tradition. I was the night CEO and there's something to be said for tradition. And when I went back, joined me for it and it did connect my past in my future together. And it just reminds you in so many start ups in the room that when the business has a purpose, uh You do really feel that weight of stewardship. And so in that moment, I, I really felt this sense of both. I had gratitude to run the company, but also like uh sharing with the others that are still, that's in front of them just that, you know, never, never take for granted that responsibility. So it, it was, it was a much more meaningful moment than I had ever imagined it would be. And I love, by the way that uh when you posted this on linkedin, Mary Barra commented and Karen Lynch, so uh good, good group of folks there. Um This is a good segue to your book, Good Power. And I uh for those who are not familiar with it, I want you to just define for us what is Good Power, what does it mean to you? Well, it, it really got and at the moment how you solve them could matter as much as what you do. And to me, it is about doing tough stuff but doing it in a good way, in a positive way. So not through fear, but through instead respect. Um It is not about polarizing people, it's about celebrating pro progress and it is about loving tension and loving conflict, which, you know, if people loved it, we'd probably solve more problems versus pity against each other. So that's kind of my short definition. OK, since you brought it up, um One of the things that you've talked about for, for quite a while and you talk about in the book is that growth and comfort, don't coexist. Um, having uncomfortable conversations is hard for. I'm pretty sure everybody in the room, most people don't run towards it. So, what have you learned over the years in your positions of leadership and your time at I B M about how to embrace them, how to go ahead and have those uncomfortable conversations when they need to happen. Yeah. And it didn't even, uh, it's, it's uncomfortable conversations or it could be something you're angry about or bully a person. It could be an issue. And to me, I, I observed by watching someone one day and I saw this person who, whenever there was a problem, they always wanted to say I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll go work on it. I thought I started watching. I thought, why does she always volunteer for the problems? And I started to witness that a, the problems were never as you always think they are at the beginning. Um, b that she always came out with a stronger relationship on the other side. Almost always. I mean, there are some bad situations but nine out of 10 and it started making me say, you know what? I actually think this is a good thing. And so I, I would start to go after it because otherwise it takes so much energy from you and when you're doing anything hard, a business starting something up, you got to really conserve the negative and positive energy, you know, reduce the negative stuff. And so you a lot of positive. So I found it is a really important way to build resilience was to go. Actually, I would start to look for those conflicts, right? And, and by the way, almost the alternate title of the book Growth and Comfort. Never Coexists because you guys know I've been on that stage many times and I've said it a million times and you know, the story it comes from, but um that was almost my alternate title. But I, I really believe it's one of the biggest things to run toward conflict is a way to build resilience. OK? I wanna talk a little bit more about um sort of the, the introductory chapters of your book. And again, for those who don't know, um you really opened up about your early years, um your childhood, how your family shape you and some of the resilience that came from that. And I was so struck by the fact that you come from this long line of women who have been widowed or abandoned at a, at a pretty young age as moms as, as and became single moms, um including your, your own mother, of course, your father abandoned the family. Um, you were the oldest of the kids and really helped raise your siblings. And I want to know, I mean, I guess a couple of things. Um Why did you decide to open up about this in a much bigger way than you had before during your, your tenure at I B M? And what do you think are the biggest ways that this background, this family history shaped you as a leader? That's a great question. And because you've known me a while and I spent decades not talking about these things and to be honest, when I first, I wasn't going to write a book at all. So those of us that know me would know. I've never talked about it. And as I was retiring, people said, but you know, you've had such a unique journey. There is a lot people could learn. And at first I was like, well, I started to mold with the idea and I really wanted to write about this topic of skills, first hiring for skills, not just degrees. And I started there. And then people were like, oh, that's a little bit boring to just go right to facts. And it forced me into this very slowly. They forced me into this. The only way people learn is through stories and being vulnerable. And there's a reason you believe these things. And so to your point when I've been raised by strong women, like women, I just saw on the stage a long line, my great grandma was the last person in her family to leave. It was Belarus at the time in the World War. She would never speak English. She would clean bathrooms in the Wrigley building at night third shift and she would put every dime she made, we were just talking about money and banks into us. Savings bonds. I mean, little did we know one day those bonds would be the only reason we'd have a car. And then my grandma, as you said, twice widowed and she would hand make lampshades. And then my mom at the age of 34 my dad would abandon us. I would happen to walk into the garage and hear it. And he would say to my mother, I don't care about you. I don't care about any of you. I don't care if you work in the street and I watched him turn around and leave and that would be it. And my mom had never worked a day outside our home. She had never gone to have a job. So, what did I learn? The three biggest things? So, after all these hard first, I did learn may be outdated, but that hard work always made something better. I watched my grandma, my great grandma, my mom, fine. And then my mom went back and got a little bit of education, got an hourly job, a little bit more, a little better job. She never did get a degree, but she got enough to get us off of food stamps and off of welfare and to keep a home and that taught me aptitude and access for two different things. And it's a really important point, meaning, you know, the world kind of gods spreads all of aptitude pretty evenly, but um not so much in this world and my mom wasn't dumb. She was pretty smart, but she never had the opportunity to get those kinds of education. And then the other part which you kind of wrote about this when you, when you and I first met and you did that cover story. But I said my mom taught me not by her words, but by watching that never let someone else define who you are, you know, only you define who you are and those would be, oh, I should say alas because this is ironic. I, I felt God no matter what I do, I am going to be independent financially. I don't have to, I never want to rely on another person, another man and I just had my 43rd wedding anniversary with my husband. So, you know, I feel like I married for a different reason than my mom. Right? Great. Um So I, I, I, I wonder, you know, in, in light of everything you just said and, and again, you know, I think we both mentioned that you weren't open about a lot of this background while you were ceo um what advice do you have to the leaders in the room on how to be strong, how to be authentic but also be vulnerable at the same time because it does impact others. It it impacts in really, really profound ways. So what advice do you, what takeaways do you have? Uh I guess my biggest takeaway was um probably the greatest thing as a leader was to be authentic over time. And I, and I'll always remember a sort of a saying once said to me that the leaders job is to paint reality and give hope. That turns out it's actually of Napoleon who said it, but that, you know, painting reality is facts, giving hope is emotion. And it's in the book, kind of, one of my biggest learnings from people was to build belief in something you got to speak to someone's head and heart at the same time. And so I, if you could just always remember, and now the only way to do that is to tell stories, you know, and you have to be vulnerable. So I would learn over time to do it at work, not everything because of course, even people who knew me well and read the book and like, I didn't know all of that. And I'm like, well, I didn't dwell on all of it. But the, I think that part and, and honestly, I think I felt better even leading in that way. And that's what I mean by good power. I think if you can speak to people's heads and hearts at the same time, the followership is, is quite large. And, and that to me is probably one of the biggest signs of success in this world now is followership. And another thing you were very open about in the book is the fact that not everything at I B M while you were ceo went, you know, splendidly, right? Um And you made a couple of very, very big bets. Um And it was a time of transformation, I mean, in a lot of ways I B M is still transforming itself again and there was declining revenue, you were dealing with a lot of different shifts. Technology was, you know, is still moving more, much more rapidly than before. So talk a little bit about just what you learned about communicating to a very large workforce during such a tough time. Um especially at a company that was used to being the top dog and then was looking at, you know, quite a few quarters of declining revenue. How did you lead through that? What do you think worked? What didn't work? Yeah. Well, oh, boy, I do write, I, I write a lot about it, right, because I feel some of it is distance you get now and some of it comes with stewardship. Um And because people, my mother would often say she'd watch TV, and she'd say, oh, you know, boy, these are some tough interviews or my little nephew once said to me, he said, auntie, does that upset you when they say bad things and about I B M or you. And I said to him, Michael, it's ok. Well, first I told my mother just turn it off for now. And then I said to him, I said I'm doing what I have to do. And I think that's the difference when you're over 100 years. I knew some of what I had to do would be really hard and I was never a victim of it, just like my mom was never a victim of my dad. You know, we each get handed our challenges of a moment and, and so some of what I learned, big bets I placed, I mean, many of the entrepreneurs in the audience play big bets boy, knowing the difference between when you're scaling or making a market, they're profoundly different and what it is that you do. And certainly with a I, you know, we were making a market that didn't exist at the time. I see so many of the issues now, right? We were exactly right, which is one decade early and uh that there hadn't yet been trust built in that technology. And so I feel, you know, I'm very honest about, I say, look, get comfortable that make decisions you may not see the benefit of. And so things that we did, right? Like Red Hat, which has now been the foundation for I B MS really return to growth. Um They just may take time, but probably the biggest lesson I write about. And I think it's relevant for anyone in the audience. I know this is the next gen group is this idea of when you're under so much pressure to become something, it's to also know what should change, but what should not change. And you know, what part of you has to endure. Even if it's modernized, I would get in trouble when I would get away from that because the pressure is so intense on you to succeed or become something else. And when I would go too far from what we were at our essence. So my, my, one of my big learnings is, you know, really know what you are in service of, be in service of something and have it really firm in your head and then be willing to change everything else. But then not that no one has to endure. And the other big learning for people in the room is you grow in your size. Is that like I said, there's one thing about what you make, but then it's how work gets done. And I would underestimate for the first few years. The how part at a huge scale. Meaning I said, I would tell people, come on, I look, I saw it happening and I knew we weren't prepared and I'm like faster, faster, faster. And I would look in their eyes and I could see they work. They were just getting tireder and things weren't faster, you know, and I would be like, ok, people don't wake up going. God, let's be slow today. I mean, they don't. And I said, OK, that is, you know, leadership's job to change how work is done. Meaning some of basic, you know, layers, levels, decisions, etcetera. But the other part are like tools and methods and processes and back then people didn't do agile with a half a million people or, or design thinking and we would have to go do all that and start to pay people for skills, not for just, you know, what work they did. So I, I say it's really underrated to think about how work gets done in your company versus just what it is you're making well and speaking of some public criticism or, or probing questions, uh the, the headline for the cover story I wrote about you back then was, can IBM be cool again? And I know in the book, you said that made you cringe. So I apologize for that. But, but um but I wonder like to, to your point. Um is that even the right? Is that even a question that needs to be asked? Because if you're looking at the, the DNA of the company and what makes this, the, what has made the company strong in the past? Is that something that you needed to worry about that when I say cringe because part of the book is all about. Um And this came up in the last session about living in a gray area and that, you know, the book is all about tensions, right? Because I think that is the world we live in. There are no clear, good and bad answers to almost anything of importance. It's always, you know, you could be serving one and then you hurt the other. I mean, it didn't matter what decision I made. There was always multiple stakeholders, always a good and a bad reason for everything. Attention. And so to your question, it gets to that point when I say cringe the cooler, I would try to make us the worst. That was because actually knowing in your heart, you know, this is one of my big learnings. I, I, I tell the story in the book because, you know, Arnie who Marriott and Arnie has passed out, but he was a good friend of mine and we were getting into marketing software and marketing on the cloud. And I can remember calling Arnie saying a um you know, I'm very, you can, I'm a very aggressive competitor and I knew him well, we'd grown up together and I'm like, I don't understand why we're not winning this. And he's like, Jenny, why do you even care about that? He's like, you know, I rely on you for property management, you know, reservation systems like that. Why do you care? And, and I always remember it because I said to myself about to be cool. Right. I'm like, you're right. That, that what we are is mission critical. I realize that's not always what a consumer sees and we live in this consumer world. And so some of the many companies in here, very consumer, but there are others that are not in kind of that knowing what you are. And like I say, even if to be modern, modernized, that to me was a really big, big, big learning to me. So in some ways, that question was a really good question. Yeah, see now that I'm older and more wiser, I could say that not, I can say this is a, this was a very insightful question because you know, you, you want to be respected but cool is not, you know, and you want people to want to work for you and believe in your purpose, right? But you don't necessarily need to become something you're not. Well, it made for a very cool cover and Jenny, it's always a pleasure talking to you. So thank you so much for being here with us even virtually and, and sharing your insights. Thank you. Hope it was helpful. Wish I could do this.