Ginni Rometty - Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World

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First eBook Edition: Mar 2023

ISBN: 978-1-64782-322-1

eISBN: 978-1-64782-323-8

For the Love of My Life, Mark,

My Mother,

My Aunt Diane,

My Grandma Mary,

My Baba Ushka.

INTRODUCTION

My mother, brother, sisters, and I each have a different memory from when our father abandoned our family just before Thanksgiving.

My mother was packing moving boxes when my father told her that he wasnt coming with us to our new house on the outskirts of Chicago because he didnt love her anymore. My younger brother, Joe, cried when he found out his dad wasnt going to live with us. At fourteen, any hope Joe had that the man who never showed up to his baseball games would suddenly become a real father was shattered. Annette, the eldest of my two younger sisters, assumed that her father was giving up on her, that she wasnt important enough to come home to. She was only eight. Darlene was just five and remembers sitting on my lap, bawling when she heard the word divorce even though she had no idea what it meant.

My memory is specific. I was sixteen when I walked into the garage of our new house and overheard my mother telling my father how desperately she needed money.

Youre not paying for anything, Nick, she was saying, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. We need to eat and pay the mortgage.

What my father said next upended everything for us, and for me.

Ill never give you anything. For all I care, you can go work on the street.

Then he walked out and drove away, leaving my mother with no money, no education past high school, and no work experience outside our home. At thirty-four, she felt heartsick and terrified. She also had four kids who found themselves in an uncertain world and needed their mother to make things better.

My dads leaving put our family at a crossroads. The path my mother choseto take community college classes so she could get a job to support our familyshowed me that no matter how desperate a situation gets, we each have within us the power to create opportunity for ourselves as well as others. Its a lesson Ive tried to apply in my own life and work. While our mom went to school and worked two jobs, I helped care for my siblings until I graduated high school and became the second person in my extended family to go to a four-year college.

In 1981, I started as an entry-level systems engineer at International Business Machines (IBM), then as now one of Americas longest-lasting and most iconic companies. After three decades learning and leading, in 2012 I became IBMs ninth chief executive officer, and the first woman CEO in its one-hundred-year history. I retired from IBM in 2020, after leading a period of necessary and tumultuous reinvention.

My journey has given me a front-row seat to five decades of technological and social change, and today Im trying to do what my mothers example taught meworking to create better opportunities for more people, in part by writing this book.

If youre wondering if this book is mostly about leadership advice for women based on my experience as a woman in business, the answer is no. Its true that I grew my career in the male-dominated tech industry, and yes, I broke glass ceilings, but thats only one facet of a larger narrative and broader set of leadership lessons. Similarly, this is not a book about technology or IBM, a company I love and have been honored to work foralthough, like my gender, IBM is intertwined with my stories and reflections.

Instead, I think the best way to describe what Ive written is a memoir with purpose, because I write about my experiences through the lens of an idea much bigger than me and my life, one that relates to all of us: how we can drive meaningful change in positive ways for ourselves, our organizations, and for the many, not just the few. Its a concept Ive come to call good power .

I didnt set off to write about power, but thats what emerged.

As I connected the dots of my history, I realized that so much of my energy went into trying to make something better by solving a problem or working to achieve whatever mission was in front of me at a given time. This was first true for my family and myself, then later for clients and people I worked with, then for the company I worked for and larger communities.

In retrospect, I can see I grew up believing that I had it within me to change things for the better. With hard work and the support of people around me, I could influence outcomes. Even transform the status quo. Essentially, I believed that I had power even if I never used that word. Not power in a stereotypically negative senseselfish, aggressive, hierarchical. I learned through experience that power didnt have to be bad to be potent. Theres such a thing as good power.

Power, I observed, can be good when wielded with respect. When it unites people for a shared purpose and motivates them to be the best version of themselves. Power can be good when it seeks to maximize beneficial impacts and avert rather than ignore harmful consequences. Power can be good when its inclusive, shared, and distributed.

Theres another thing I noticed about power as I scoured my past. Problem-solving happens when people, in the spirit of bridging differences, embrace the tensions that arise from opposing forces. Answers to complex questions are rarely if ever right or wrong, yes or no, this or that. Instead of insisting on either X or Y, Ive seen how much more is achieved when we consider X and Y, accepting that the best resolution may be a third way. Its tempting to run from conflict, but its more effective to face it. For years Ive said that growth and comfort never coexist. This is true for people, for organizations, and for countries. If we want to fix whats broken, we have to feel uncomfortable, and thats okay.

One more truth I learned about power: for power to be of any real value, it must enable tangible progress. That means whatever results were after are realized, in whole or in part. Something or someone must benefit. Intention without making headway is fruitless.

Essentially, writing this book helped me clarify that power is necessary to change things for the better, and that power can be good when its wielded respectfully, when it navigates tensions, and when it strives for progress over one persons idea of perfection. Respect. Tension. Progress. Youll see these ideas threaded throughout the book, because they were threaded throughout my experiences. I hope they will emerge for you as they did for me, as keys to influencing meaningful change in positive ways.