IBM 2001 Annual Report Download - page 39

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no. 14
We loosened our tie
CHANGING CORPORATE CULTURE
In the early days of the 1990s, we knew that a lot of things
about IBM had to change: financial, strategic, operational. We
tackled those, and by the middle of the decade, the company
was no longer on life-support.
But there was one more hill to climb. In order to deliver
on IBM’s value proposition
—
uniting business knowledge and
technology to provide integrated solutions for our customers
—
we had to change something even tougher.
Ourselves.
We’ve reinvented how we compensate people and who
we hire. We provided people with the tools, opportunities
and flexibility to control their own work/life balance, and their
own learning. We’ve rethought all kinds of assumptions
about management
,
including the role of the manager.
Changing a company’s culture
—
turning it once again into an
unbeatable competitive asset, rather than a near-fatal malady
—
that’s about a lot more than allowing people to bring their dogs
into the office or dropping a dress code.
And, for the record, “dropping the IBM dress code” was the
biggest culture-change move we never made. We simply said
IBMers should dress appropriately for the task at hand. We
trusted their judgment
—
on a lot more than clothing.