In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with Ginni Rometty, former chairman and CEO at IBM, about her new book, Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World (Harvard Business Review Press, March 2023). Rometty recounts her journey from childhood poverty to the Fortune 500 C-suite and shares the most important lessons she learned along the way—like the diversifying impact of hiring for skills over degrees, and her own surefire tricks for developing a resilient mindset. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Why did you write this book?
I actually never set out to write a book. I never kept papers to do it. I never began to do it. It was a different journey and road that took me to this. When I announced that I would be retiring after 40 years, so many people said to me, “You should write a book about all your experiences.”
It’s true: I’ve had a journey that’s spanned from when I was raised—having been abandoned by my father, who left us with no money and no home—to here, my goodness, having ended up as the CEO of IBM and now the cochair of an organization called OneTen. In that process, what could I share?
As I started to think about if I should write a book and if I could write a book, I knew if I did anything, it had to be really authentic to me—which would mean storytelling—and it had to be something that I hoped could help people, by way of a bit of teaching.
As I thought through my own journey, it took me down a path where I said, “Okay, I could write this, and while it wouldn’t cover everything about me or every company I’ve worked for, I could tell a story with these pieces that would ladder up and, I hope, give people confidence that they can drive change for themselves, for their family, for work, and eventually for society.”
That’s what my journey taught me, that I could do really meaningful things in a positive way—so that the ‘how’ it was done was maybe even more important than the ‘what’.
That’s what my journey taught me, that I could do really meaningful things in a positive way—so that the “how” it was done was maybe even more important than the “what.” The desire to drive change and actually do it is a choice. It’s available to all of us. In the end, this turned out to be a book of stories at different parts of our lives. There’s the power of me as an individual, the power of we when we begin to help others, and then the power of us when these things eventually ladder up to the ability to have an impact on society.
What does it mean to have a culture of ‘skills first’?
The book builds up to a section called “The Power of We.” In this case, I teach through storytelling my example, which is my commitment to creating better jobs and opportunity for more people. You may have a different goal that you’re working on, and that’s okay. The idea is that you can scale the idea of good power and drive systemic change.
Right now, there is so much discussion about jobs in the labor market and layoffs. I believe fixing this issue is not about programs. My journey has taught me that a movement toward what I would call a culture of “skills first” is what’s needed.
We’re all bookended by our experiences. When my father left my mother, she had nothing more than a high school education and had never worked outside the home. There we were: homeless with no money, but she found a way to get just enough education to get a better job, then a little more [education] and another better job, in order to change our circumstances.
At a really early age, I started to learn by watching that aptitude and access are two different things. My mom wasn’t dumb—she was smart, but she didn’t have access to things for most of her life. With a little bit of access to education, she changed her circumstances.
At a really early age, I started to learn by watching that aptitude and access are two different things. My mom wasn’t dumb—she was smart, but she didn’t have access to things for most of her life. With a little bit of access to education, she changed her circumstances.
Fast-forward to when I became CEO: it was a time when the technology industry was just beginning to grapple with cloud, mobile, security, data, AI, and social networking, all at once. I was looking for cybersecurity skills and [couldn’t find any], even though unemployment back in 2012 was almost 8 percent to 10 percent. I realized that on the West Coast and East Coast of the United States and in many other countries, pockets of people were benefiting from this new technology, but not the majority.
When we started to work with a high school or community college and give them some instruction on the kind of curriculum—mostly soft skills, by the way—that companies use to hire and then train, lo and behold, I started to see a very diverse talent pool of associate degrees—not [bachelor’s] degrees. I said to myself, “Wow, I need this talent pool. It is diverse, and I’m beginning to also solve another problem by giving economic opportunity to more people.”
I tell you that story because at the same time, I was reinventing IBM’s skill set. Along the whole journey, access and aptitude are different. What is it now? It’s curiosity and the willingness to learn something new that makes the biggest difference, as evidenced by a new model we find from six-year high schools. The students are as productive as four-year degree students, and it teaches me that many of my jobs are overcredentialed to begin with. In the reinvention of the current workforce, I’m motivating them to get a new skill. It doesn’t matter what their degree was.
All of these ideas converged in my mind to something that said, “Wait a second, we’ve got to move the whole country to a skills-view, not just degree-view, of jobs, and then hire for that and reward for that.” This accomplishes many things. First, as an employer, I need more people with the right skills. Second, there are so many people left out of economic opportunity. This brings more people back into our workforce.
At the end of the day, in this environment right now, the number-one thing a company can do to build the most inclusive and productive workforce is to think of skills first as a culture, not a program.
Why do you say, ‘growth and comfort never coexist’?
One of the most important lessons I learned was when I was about ten years into my career. I had been running a pretty large-size business. I went in to see my boss, and he said to me, “I have great news for you.” He said, “I’m getting promoted, and I think you should take my job.” I said, “Whoa, I’m not ready for your job. Maybe after a little bit more time, but I’ve only done half of the scope. This is global—it’s a full business, so I think I need a couple more years.”
He said to me, “Hmm, okay. Go to the interview.” So, I went to the interview, and the gentleman offered me the job. My answer was, “You know what, I’d like to go home and talk to my husband about it.” He said, “Okay, go ahead.” So I went home, and my husband—who I’ve now been married to for 43 years—listened and said, “Do you think a man would’ve answered that question that way?” I said, “No.” He said, “I know you. In six months, you’re going to be bored and wanting to learn more. You’ve got all these kinds of capabilities that are useful. Why wouldn’t you just say yes?”
I thought about it, and I went in the next day and accepted the role. What it crystallized for me, and hopefully for you, is this thought that my growth and comfort would never coexist.
I think if you shut your eyes and think about when you learned the most in life, it’ll be at times when you were in risky or uncertain situations. That crystallization made it much easier for me to take on risky changes in different jobs that were really difficult. I realized that when I put myself in those circumstances, even though it didn’t feel right on the inside, I learned a lot. I also learned that just because I may feel uncomfortable inside, it doesn’t mean I have to tell everyone that at the same time.
It’s okay to be uncomfortable on the inside, and I would go on to find that to be true whether it was a person, a company, or a country. With IBM, to transition it from one era to another and do all the work that had to be done, we would live through a very uncomfortable period.
What is the value of a leader asking for help?
I learned another really valuable lesson doing hard things: leading the acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting and doing a large integration, the largest ever to that point. There had been a number of failed mergers in this area beforehand. We were, perhaps, the fifth underway, and all four before that had not gone so well.
We weren’t quite hitting the numbers that IBM wanted. We would try and try and try, and at some point, I had to realize, “Okay, I need to get help.” Trying, trying, trying—as I’d learned many times—is going to exhaust a workforce, versus asking, “what is it you need to do something differently?”
When people won’t ask for help when they need it, I get very nervous. To me, that’s a great sign of weakness.
That opened my eyes to be willing to ask for help. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness, because you’re acknowledging what you or the organization know or don’t know. I then became very comfortable and confident with what we had to do. There is no problem with saying to others, “I need help in this area. I’m not sure why this isn’t working. I can’t get it to work.”
To me, this is such a valuable lesson. It takes a strong person to do that, to ask for help. When people won’t ask for help when they need it, I get very nervous. To me, that’s a great sign of weakness.
What does it mean to look for the ‘aha’ moment and to be a ‘velvet hammer’?
In the section called “The Power of We,” retrospectively, I say that I learned five different principles about driving change.
One of the very first ones was that if you’re going to drive change, be clear that you are in service of something. Be in service of something or someone. That is completely different than serving something, because when you are in service of something, you fulfill what they need first. You take a leap of faith, and as a result, your goals will eventually be fulfilled.
For me, given I had spent a life always serving clients, one of the big things I learned was that time was the most valuable thing they could give me. Therefore, in return, I had to give them value. There were some habits I formed over time on how to do that. One of them was to find the “aha.” Always look for the “aha.”
I will always remember one client I worked with. My team had worked night and day preparing a big report. We went into the CEO’s office, sat down, and gave him his [report]. I have mine. The decks are very detailed. We’re going through the first page, and he’s looking over at my deck. Mine, of course, is highlighted and has notes on the side. He says, “Well, give me yours.” I said, “I’m not going to give you mine.” He said, “I don’t have time to go through all this. I want to get the essence of it.” I realized in that moment that he didn’t care about a lot of other things other than the real insights.
I couldn’t just tell him what he knew, and the way I told him had to be crisp and concise. I always say it’s the “aha,” meaning he didn’t need me to just repeat back what I’d found in his firms but to assimilate everything I knew and then tell him something insightful that he didn’t know before. This is very hard to do, by the way, and I’ve worked on this my whole life with clients.
The “ahas” are not always positive, and the ability to build a really enduring relationship with your client and customer is related to the idea of being a velvet hammer. When things are not always positive, you still have to deliver that message. I made mistakes when I didn’t deliver it. People would go down a wrong path. You have to be honest about strengths and weaknesses, so it’s a tough message.
When things are not always positive, you still have to deliver that message. I made mistakes when I didn’t deliver it. People would go down a wrong path. You have to be honest about strengths and weaknesses, so it’s a tough message.
But that can be done respectfully, which is, by the way, one of the big tenets of Good Power. It says, “We all have to navigate tensions, but do it respectfully and celebrate progress.” Doing it respectfully is like being a velvet hammer: it’s telling people things in a way where they can take the bad medicine. It can be confrontational, but a velvet hammer is something that—if you can develop it for the long term—is always the better way to deal with conflict.
How should leaders learn to compartmentalize?
When I look for leaders, I think of a few things. I look at their curiosity, for sure. Are they an Olympic learner? The second thing is resilience, because it is nothing but a world of uncertainty and tension [out there]. Resilience is the most important characteristic, along with curiosity, for any leader. It’s not exactly about what you know; it’s about those two dimensions.
I think there are two ways to develop resilience: one is through the relationships you have. I speak a lot in this book about the different kinds of relationships and what they do for you. Basically, they give you perspective.
The second way is through your attitude. Given where I came from, I saw bad things, and nothing could ever be that bad again, so, to me, there is always a way forward. My mother demonstrated to me that no matter how bad something gets, there is a way forward. This is the way I think about everything I do, that there is a way forward.
So what are some of the tricks to always believing there’s a way forward? Part of it is your conviction about what things should be done, but there are other ways as well to both fuel your resilience and your attitude. One way is through things you can control: control them and get them off the table.
As an example, people have always wondered why I wear headbands. It’s not for fashion, because I wear them in and out of style. I don’t care. It’s because I can’t see. I have glasses, and I can’t see with hair in my eyes, so I wear a headband. I can control that—boom, get it off the table.
As you go on and experience things and the number of crises build up, they’re separated by minutes. A very effective method for me was to compartmentalize—meaning, in the moment, be very present on the topic, find a plan forward, be sure about how it’s going to get executed, and put it in that box. Take it out of your head for now so that you can be in the moment and focus on the next thing. When it’s time, open the box back up and work on it.
Eleven years after you became the 19th woman Fortune 500 CEO, there are now 53. Is this progress or a lack thereof?
Good Power is celebrating progress over perfection. Is 10 percent our goal? No, but it is some progress. It’s why I also feel so strongly about the topic of a role model. I didn’t always feel this way, I must tell you.
Very early in my career, I never wanted to be recognized as being a woman. I wanted to be recognized for my work. At one point, maybe ten years in, I was down in Australia doing some work and giving a big presentation on financial services. A man walked up to me and said, “I wish my daughter had been here to see this.” That moment was a bit of a transition, like the book says, from the power of me to the power of we, and I realized this isn’t about me—forget that I didn’t want to be recognized this way.
You cannot be what you cannot see, and we each have to accept the responsibility that if we’re blessed with moving on in these roles, we have to be a role model and embrace it to a large degree. In the book, I do speak a bit about being a woman in those times and now, which are things I never spoke of, but I realized they’re important to another generation, another group of people who want to be inspired and believe that they can be this.
It’s interesting to me even now: I’ll talk to people that know I’m doing a book, and they’ll say, “I cannot wait for my daughter to read it.” I think to myself, “Thirty years later, here we still are.” It does tell me how far we really have yet to go.
You say that you like to be very prepared. What does this have to do with the standards to which women are held?
It was the ’70s and the ’80s when I went into the workforce. When I was in college in the ’70s and went into university, I was in engineering. I was the only woman or one of few in those classes. My journey taught me, “If I’m going to say something or answer a question, it unfortunately is going to be remembered because there’s one of me and there are 30 of them in this room.” It began and continued that cycle of prepare, prepare, prepare.
If I prepared, it was a bit of a shield. My knowledge was my confidence. Over time, preparation yielded knowledge which yielded confidence and my ability to take on another risk. That is a cycle that continues to this day for me. I see with many women that they feel they have to be the most prepared because what they do does stand out. And it’s not just women—I see this with other underrepresented groups.
By the way, I think that preparation helped me bring value to clients, so I wouldn’t change it for anything. I believe many people have an impostor syndrome, and this is also one way to address that: always feeling prepared in the moment.
What is your advice for conflict management?
Let’s talk for a minute about conflict. One of the other things I write about a fair amount in the book is that I learned to run toward conflict. Conflict can otherwise eat away at you and take away really precious energy.
It could be personal, it could be your family life, it could be work, it could be a boss, or it could be a client. I started to learn that if I would run toward it, it would relieve energy drain on me significantly and flip that around. There are different ways to run toward conflict. One is to protest, take a stand, and be very vocal. It depends on the situation. I think you have to become good at judging which things have to be taken on publicly, and which things have to be taken on privately.
In university, I watched a colleague who really wanted to go after a professor in a class. Knowing that professor’s personality, I said to him, “Either you can do that in class—and you will perhaps win the battle but lose the war—or you can take it outside of class.”
Whenever you position something so that there’s going to be a winner and a loser, very rarely have I seen that be to anybody’s benefit. If you position something so that there is no way out other than making the other person look like a loser, you’re not going to get done what you have to get done.
That doesn’t always mean public or private. I think it means keeping your eye on what you’re really trying to get done and what [provides] the best odds of that happening.
Whenever you position something so that there’s going to be a winner and a loser, very rarely have I seen that be to anybody’s benefit. If you position something so that there is no way out other than making the other person look like a loser, you’re not going to get done what you have to get done.
What is your parting note to readers at the end of the book?
When I step back and I think of the book end to end, I hope my storytelling is in service of people that read the book and that it gives them the confidence that they really can change something, and that scope and potency grow over time.
But it isn’t just about what you change. To me, change is a very personal thing, so I decided to end the book the same way I tried to lead, which often was by personalizing things for people. I often left handwritten letters, so it drove me to want to have an ending that is a handwritten letter from me to you.
It says, “Dear reader, thank you for giving me your most valuable asset—your time. Before we part ways, one final thought from me to you. Whatever your ambitions, you’ll not only be remembered for what you achieve, your greatest legacy just might be how you achieve it. Keep that in mind every day, and I promise that you will be proud of the life you live. With gratitude.”
