"I have had to do plenty of unpopular things I think anytime you have to run a company that endures a century and has to endure another Century you will do unpopular things you have no choice and I oft..."

"president and chairman of IBM and for many years she was widely considered to be one of the most powerful women in the world she's the author of a new book on power leadership and her life story calle..."

"you worked at IBM for over 40 years starting as a systems engineer and you ran the company as chairman president CEO from 2011 to 2020 IBM is one of the largest tech companies in the world with maybe ..."

"a big company what was the parts that you thought should endure the core of the company that was beautiful and powerful and could persist through time that it should persist through time I'd be intere..."

"public facing part yeah no it is well certainly the research part itself right is over three thousand so it's not that small that's a pretty big research yes but the part that should endure ends up be..."

"be coming running and being better running the infrastructure of the world so doing it at scale doing it reliably yes secure in this world that's like everything and in fact when I started I almost fe..."

"that would not have been true as you well know back even two decades ago right so um it changes but I think at its core it's that be essential you said moonshot can all be moonshots because moonshots ..."

"you know people are a master or to this process and that's not right and when you're big the other thing and boy there's a premium on it is speed right that in our industry you got to be fast and go b..."

"it taught me like the house perhaps more important than the what because if I didn't do something to change how work was done like change those processes or you know give them new tools help them with..."

"agile and um because you've really got to change the way work gets done and we ended up training God hundreds of thousands of people on that stuff change it correctly on how to do it correctly that's ..."

"that has lots of benefits right time to a decision um more autonomy to people because and then the idea of like faster Clarity of of where you're going because you're not just filtered through so many..."

"be almost autocratic take control make hard unpopular decisions oh I am sure you know the answer to that and and it is of course yes yeah you know because I actually um a there's a leader for a time b..."

"of Crisis as well you got to be I wish that it's not a popularity contest so that's none of these jobs or popularity contests I don't care if your company's got one person or half a million they're no..."

"lot of people from outside very willing to learn new things come on in come on in and I sometimes say shiny objects trained in shiny objects come on in but I saw something it was another one of these ..."

"taking risks all of those things and nobody's really skilled in AI It's like because you're absolutely right that's right I couldn't agree more with you on that you uh you wrote In the book uh speakin..."

"balance between showing the way and helping people find the way that is a good question because like a really flip answer would be as it gets bigger you have no choice but to just you know you can't d..."

"and I actually think it's a struggle young companies have because the values aren't deeply rooted and when a storm comes it's easy to uproot and um so I always felt like when it was that time I showed..."

"learning right so you know I can remember when we started down the journey and we went on to this thing called it think Academy IBM's longtime motto have been think and we said okay I'm gonna make the..."

"you like to prepare yeah but there's roots in that go back deeply deeply deeply deeply I and I think it's an interesting reason so why do why are you you're preparer my friend yeah yes you are you pre..."

"like to prepare yeah it came from a few different places I mean one would have been as a as a kid I think um I was not a memorizer and my brother is brilliant he can he read it once boom done and so I..."

"prepare um if I was really prepared then when we're in the moment I can really listen to you see because I don't have to be doing all this stuff on the fly in my head and I could actually take things ..."

"be the first and I'm I'm really careful to say that to people because I don't think everyone should associate G to do what you did you have to there's only one route there right and that's just not tr..."

"father leaves my mother uh homeless no money no food nothing four kids she's never worked a day in her life outside of a home and I the irony that I hear I would end up is the ninth CEO of one of Amer..."

"I were comparing notes on on Russia right and never spoke English spoke Russian came here to this country was a cleaning person at the Wrigley building in Chicago yet if she hadn't saved every dime sh..."

"roots go way back there and they were always teaching something right my great grandma was teaching me how to cook how to work a farm even though I didn't need to be on a farm my grandma taught me you..."

"self-belief that I'll figure it out I'll figure it out and practically both right so you wrote quote I vividly remember the last two weeks of my freshman year when I only had 25 cents left I put the q..."

"line about an advice you were given that growth and comfort never coexist growth and comfort never coexist and you have to get used to that thought if someone said that they think of me like one of th..."

"work for is going to get a new job it's going to get promoted he calls me and he says hey you're gonna get my job I really want you to have it and I said to him no way I I said I'm not ready for that ..."

"feeling that and it it I'm gonna I am gonna say something it's a bit stereotype that it resonates with many many women and I'll ask you if it does after is that either the most harsh critic of themsel..."

"matters I think it's interesting the maybe you could speak to the the sort of the self-critical thing inside your inside your brain because I think sometimes um is talked about that women have that um..."

"candidates through their management track now these programs don't exist anymore like that they will pay your tuition your room and board your expenses uh Northwestern other Ivy League school these ve..."

"a contrast good to bad let's say would be that first off you have to embrace and navigate tension this is the world we live in and by embracing tension not running from it you would Bridge divides tha..."

"a step forward of progress really tough stuff can get done and so my view of that is like honestly I hope it can you know I said it's like a memoir with purpose I'm only doing it it was a really hard ..."

"of navigate tensions do it respectfully celebrate progress and give me indulge me one more minute these sort of again it's retrospect that I I didn't know this in the moment I had to learn it I learne..."

"his food he did his job or did he carry he had a good time so that thought to be in service of it took me a while to get that like to try to write it to get that across because I think it's like so fu..."

"like good Tech everybody's a tech company I don't care what you do today and there's some fundamental things you got to do in fact pick up today's any newspaper right chat GPT you're an AI guy all rig..."

"80s 90s I'm a woman I'm in technology and I was down in Australia at a conference and I gave this great speech again me power of me you know I'm thinking give this great speech financial services this..."

"can be somewhat gradual that you come and you may have these like pivotal moments that you see it but then you feel it and you sort of move over that transom into the power of Lee you're one of the mo..."

"mean it's like I always say to someone like um Hey listen to me tell me tell me what would make me better or do something or I have a husband that'll do that for me quite easily by the way you'll alwa..."

"there's you know sometimes the way diversities looked at with the the way diversity is used today is like surface level characteristics which are also important um but they're usually reflective of so..."

"like for good power you are a CEO of uh you are a CEO for a long time of a public company were there times when there was pressure to sacrifice what is good for the world um for the bottom line in ord..."

"in a black and white World hardly maybe things of values that I had to answer but most of it is great and so um I think back lots of different decisions um I think back as you would well remember you'..."

"sound so basic but you as an engineer understand it we had to separate it was a very integrated process of research development and Manufacturing and you'd also you'd be perfecting things in manufactu..."

"with the with the class because you work with gigantic businesses and what what's it like sort of um really forming a great relationship with them understanding what their needs are being service of t..."

"right so to me how you work with those big kind of clients is you honor your promises you you say what you do when you do what you say and you act with values over a long period of time and that to me..."

"so many people depend on you you have a huge Workforce they're depending on you you have clients whose businesses don't run if you don't perform Etc and shareholders of course right and so but I also ..."

"really proud of the team for what they did that is actually pretty miraculous to have made it through that I have my little nephew one day and you would see on TV occasionally when there would be crit..."

"yes and so in in that my last year uh our services business we broke it into two pieces and one piece was spun off into a company called kindral which is managed Outsourcing um keeping things running ..."

"application remember we're not an application company so it wasn't like we had an office we didn't have anything that like pulled things out to the cloud and so as we looked for what our best what we ..."

"I mean you know our history right at one time we had the PC business and you know the short answer to why would we would not do that is it's a consumer-facing business we were good at the Enterprise a..."

"we were never great at making a lot of money at that and you can remember original as IBM PC than there were IBM clones or you they even called IBM clones back then um as the field became highly highl..."

"still in places that went to Toshiba can you speak the Consulting a little bit what does that entail to train up to hire a Workforce that can be of service to all kinds of different problems in the so..."

"at the time back then that's what you know there have been five of those that have failed the companies that bought other consulting firms and um so we were okay that was the great thing about I mean ..."

"personal question so that was a big thing you were a part of that you led uh in 2002 that you championed and helped I should say negotiate the purchase of one day the Consulting arm um of pricewaterho..."

"of that that was a big leap step up for you you've been in IBM for a long time yeah this is this is a big sort of leadership uh like very impactful large-scale leadership decisions yeah what was that ..."

"but make no mistake like it was very hard and it was it turned out to be extremely successful by the time we ended it was worth 19 one time I stepped I ran it for oh goodness gracious uh quite a long ..."

"taught me like you no no matter how bad this gets you are not giving up and this now you can't keep doing the same thing like the you know doctor this hurts oh then stop doing it you know you can't ke..."

"people would have the wisdom of what what it takes to have great negotiation but yeah so it's a win-win is is one of the ways you can have this but it's like obvious to even say that right I mean if y..."

"ask the Romantic question what did you love most about engineering computer science electrical engineering so in those early days from your degree to the to the earth I I love that logic part of it ri..."

"to math it was the only course in my four-year college education I had to take pass fail because otherwise I I risked you know impairing my uh my my grade point average engineering it is so but after ..."

"it was really symbolic it was to mean this is to help you think not replace your thinking there was so much in the Zeitgeist about AI being a bad thing at that time so that was why we picked a mouthfu..."

"around experiential and so do you ever give it up I I don't think so because I actually think that's pretty good to get your hands dirty in something you know you can't do it you know depending what y..."

"it's about the amount of time and how fast it can crunch through to find the right move so in some ways I thought of it as almost a bigger demonstration of that but it is absolutely as you said it it ..."

"about those things I didn't see it as computation I thought of it as um uh intelligence because chess for a human being doesn't feel like computation yeah it it feels like some complicated uh relation..."

"difficult discussions about well how do we treat those beings and what role do they have in society what are the rules around that you know and this is really exciting because that also puts a mirror ..."

"you say hey natural language it's actually understanding natural language it's one of the first demonstrations of natural language support and bit of reasoning over lots of data right and so that it c..."

"over it made it more modular and today tybm a Watson is more about AI inside of a lot of things if you think of it that way which is more like an ingredient versus it's a thing in and of itself and I ..."

"banks very unionized but that idea that you could in this case the unions voted for it because it felt people did a better job and so and that's this part about being really dedicated to help it help ..."

"afterwards you know but here's what I think it more was I do think it's one of the early demonstrations of evil AI yeah like can be taught bad I could push back on that because it's presented as evil ..."

"right and that that it needs really considerable not just attention because otherwise it will mirror everything we love and everything we don't love and again and that's the beauty in the eye of Behol..."

"um and I mean in general just having a lot of public conversations about this is serious stuff it's uh um that AI will have a transformative impact on our society and it might do so very very quickly ..."

"is I think back it was probably 20 I don't know 15 16. we did principles of trust and transparency notice the word transparency that belief that with AI it should be explainable you should know who ta..."

"syndrome that self-critical brain so you know taking that big step into leadership did you did you at times suffer from imposter syndrome like how did I get here do I really belong here or did you wer..."

"yeah good or bad yeah one important lesson you said you've learned from your mom is never let anyone else Define you only you define who you are so what's the trajectory let's say of your self-definit..."

"70s and the 80s where I think I was surrounded all the other women around me viewed our way to get ahead was just to work hard work hard work hard and that was the way you differentiated yourself and ..."

"all that said back to my earlier story about being a role model you know it would be foolish to not believe that there were times that that mattered and I would say two things even not that long ago y..."

"and bad I mean there's benefit to that too right you if you do good work you'll be wrecking it's easier to be recognized and so a pronicon and I think um I've just you know grown up believing like my ..."

"so one of my last year's uh we had been working on it just did Regular leadership session at IBM and had our black colleagues we're talking about what did it feel like to be a black leader and here th..."

"what the actual work is whether it's nuclear fusion or strategypt I just want to show that it's um because I see it at MIT and everywhere it's just human beings trying their best they're flawed but um..."

"and I might have said you know you're the only one that can determine your own work-life balance companies are innate things I mean they will take everything they can from you and it's not a bad thing..."

"right I know other great women CEOs uh Marilyn Houston who ran Lockheed Martin extremely technical company maryborough who runs General Motors Alan Coleman who run Dupont these are all my friends to t..."

"sister who uh you know went to Northwestern has an MBA built some of the most sophisticated systems uh she spent her whole career at Accenture and just recently retired as a chief executive of all of ..."

"know and and I so with the long answer to your question about I didn't but I am so empathetic and I am in awe of what they are able to do so uh and it made me then I think more empathetic to the polic..."

"they are we are friends all of us and I can remember some of them when I first became a CEO calling me and saying hey it's a little lonely here so let me talk to you and then when they became I did th..."