The IBM Culture … the Times They Are A-Changing

The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.

- Lou Gerstner

Have you worked for several businesses? Have you noticed the differences in culture between these businesses? After I retired after being at one location for 30 years, I went to work for a second business for 6 years. It was after that I realized the significance of the culture of a business. I worked the first 17 years with IBM and its culture. IBM was steeped in culture especially during those years.

The challenge in most businesses is culture — changing our entrenched ways of thinking, acting, and organizing. In some cases, the culture is changed by leadership with no game plan intended. It just happened through the style of senior leadership or business decisions made over time. This was the case of IBM and its culture … many cultural changes, most of them that occurred through business changes and decisions over time.

I was very fortunate to have spent the first 17 years of my career (1977–1994) with IBM and its culture. When I left IBM it was because IBM sold its Federal Systems Division because the business was in trouble and it needed the cash.

No one had as much influence on IBM’s culture as its first two CEOs… Thomas J. Watson (CEO from 1914 to 1956) and Thomas J. Watson, Jr…