Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround

In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the computer industry had changed so rapidly the company was on its way to losing $16 billion and IBM was on a watch list for extinction victimised by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.

Then Lou Gerstner was brought in to run IBM. Almost everyone presumed he had joined IBM to preside over its continued dissolution into a confederation of autonomous business units. Instead, Gerstner took hold of the company and demanded that managers work together to re-establish IBM’s mission as a customer-focused provider of computing solutions. He made the bold decision to keep the company together, slash prices on the core product to keep the company competitive, and almost defiantly announced, “The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.”

Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? tells the story of IBM’s competitive and cultural transformation. In his own words, Gerstner offers a blow-by-blow account of his arrival at the company and his campaign to rebuild the leadership team and give the workforce a renewed sense of purpose. In the process, Gerstner defined a strategy for the computing giant and remade the ossified culture bred by the company’s own success.

The first-hand story of an extraordinary turnaround, a unique case study in managing a crisis, and a thoughtful reflection on the computer industry and the principles of leadership, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? sums up Lou Gerstner’s historic business achievement. Gerstner recounts the high-level meetings and explains the pressure-filled, no-turning-back decisions that had to be made. He also offers his hard-won conclusions about the essence of what makes a great company run.