Ginni Rometty

She joined IBM as a systems engineer in Detroit in nineteen one and rose through the ranks in technical sales and then management jobs. In two thousand twelve, she got the company's top job and steered IBM through major technological transformations and ups and downs. On this edition of Bloomberg Studio one point Oh, former IBM CEO and Chair Jinny Remetti bids a fond fair well to one of the great loves of her life. This is her exit interview. You are leaving IBM after an eight year tenure as

CEO and nearly forty years at the company. How does that feel? Uh, it's almost surreal in some ways. Obviously it's a company I loved her I wouldn't have stayed here for forty years. So it feels like it's a great moment because we've just really been through quite a transformation. So on one way, on one hand, it's bittersweet. On another hand, I leave with really great confidence for the company. What are you most nostalgic about and what are you

most excited about? Uh, well, I'm certainly most nostalgic about. Um, the people in the platform of the company. I mean, I really do believe IBM stands for the gold standard of good tech and what we do most systems of the world wouldn't run without us. So it's the people that do that work I'll be most nostalgic about, and

the clients who have been decades of relationships. Um. But as well, what I'm going to look forward to, because I think it's been one of the great things I've had a chance to work on, is a lot about

making an inclusive workforce. So one of the things I'm going to do in my retirement is to lead up with Ken Fraser from murk an initiative called one ten to place a million black employees over the next ten years into our companies with one ten This organization of you know, three dozen or so companies is pledging to hire, train, and promote one million black workers over the course of ten years. How did you come to be involved in

this initiative? As I worked on the digital economy and saw digital transformation, what was happening to me, it was really clear a large segment of of the population would be left behind. So we had started some work which we can talk about on bridging this education gap because we needed the employees too. But you know, they couldn't get college degrees fast enough or was there another way to hire a whole swath of of of people out there that could be prepared with a high school degree

and maybe an associate degree. So pause there. But then as the pandemic happened, and then obviously with the killing of George Floyd and really coming back to the surface around systemic racism, uh Ken can Channel from American Express, Can Frasier of of MERK, as well as Charles Phillips and Kevin Sheer from am JEN came together and we all started saying what do we do best as companies? What we can do is hire people and economic opportunity

is the best equalizer. That's just the beginning, because then it's the supply chains and very simply, it's just putting supply and demand together and all of the supply a subscale for black employees, and we're gonna help grow that. What do you think is broken about the way companies higher promote and train their workers. On one hand, you have an education system that you may have gotten a lot of debt for an education, yet you really don't have employable skills yet. So one is to work with

the schools. And then on the employee side, it's really breaking down a barrier of a perception that, gee, if I bring people into my company that don't have a college degree, I'm in some form dumbing down the workforce. It's not true. I mean, now that I've been at it eight nine, ten years, what we've learned is that great aptitude just didn't have the same access as everyone else.

At the same time, these are best employees. And by the way, as they've been around, lots of other people now have college degrees and we just had our first PhD. So the biggest thing we're going to work with all the employers on is you've got to change your job breath. It is a systemic barrier, meaning if every job you offer out there lists a whole set of college degrees required, you have completely blocked out large segments of the United

States population. Sixty percent of Americans do not have a college degree. Eight percent of Black Americans do not have a college degree. So you've just completely taken them off your radar screen. Now, if you would change that and say higher skills first, a different paradigm, well then you're going to open your aperture to some great employees. And so so when you say what is broke, I think it's this view that it's a degree only versus skills first,

not just a degree. Do you think that companies and the tech industry in particular, do they value differences in race, differences in gender, differences in age as much as they should? Well, look that the numbers don't lie about that, and so it'd be hard to answer that the system works. Right. But now, look, I do come from a company. I feel like I stand on the shoulders of giants on

this topic. Right, it was one of our predecessor companies had their first woman in first black Right, so it was ninety five equal pay, nineteen fifty three equal opportunity. So I am used to that. All that said, all of us have to do better. I mean, I'm so proud, you know what I mean. We had record record diversity and inclusion numbers in my last year and this year again at IBM, and so that takes though not one deed to me. It is like a million things that

you have to be so consistent. And the word is authentic. You have got to authentically believe that this will make you a better company. It will make you better innovation, better products. And you know, in my heart I believe that, and I think as a company in its DNA, it believes that. And how much do you think it matters that the CEO of the leadership makes this a number one priority. I think it's imperative, point blank. And in fact, actually the one ten initiative I'm working on it is

only CEOs allowed. And so and I don't mean that in a in an exclusionary sense. We mean it as if you're going to actually change paradigms, remove barriers, you've got to have someone at the top say no, no, no, this will be important. Diversity is a number. Inclusion is a choice and you have to show people you make that choice over and over. Absolutely, you joined DIBAN when Apple was in its infancy, Facebook, Google, Amazon didn't even

exist yet. You have seen so many technological shifts, whether it was the rise of the PC or smartphone or more recently the cloud, AI, quantum computing um. Which of these shifts has surprised you most or you know, does

anything even surprise you anymore? I'm not sure anything surprises me anymore, but I do think more current in this sort of last era, Uh, not a surprise, but it is absolutely the speed at which these have happened, and that there's been multiple shifts at one time, because you could say you saw cloud, you saw mobility, you see AI data, all this at one time. And I think that's actually been what's made this digital transformation era the one that has had the most impact and most impact

on IBM. I mean clearly, when I took over, I had to refocus the company for cloud and data and it's the speed at which those were moving in and for us, that's that's been a journey, right, It's it's clearly to been our most historic transformation where we've had to divest businesses or almost over ten billion dollars of businesses to give you fuel. And then we did in my time billion of R and D. And then another sixty five was Asians. IBM reacted very quickly when the

pandemic arrived in early March. How unexpected and unprecedented was that for you as a leader? Did that surprise you? You know, I'll have to say at a personal level to some degree yes, intellectually no, And and I'll give you this example so here, because we're global hundred seventy countries, we were obviously participating with this with our Chinese workforce, some Japanese workforce, we see, Italy were everywhere. And I am proud by the way every country we were able

in days IBM r s we're working remotely. So UM, I'm very proud of what this says about the infrastructure, how we do our work, our customers. That said, UM, I kind of remember it was middle of March, I've done some TV interviews and that it was my wedding anniversary, and I was going to fly to meet my husband

for a weekend. UH. And as I left, I only packed for four days UH to go down to that house to see him, and never did I really sort of realized, nope, I might not actually come back after this and stay at home, right, And and so that's why miss so intellectually, I think we all saw it. Everyone I know right that I've talked to sort of has a similar story about um the speed at which it then moved that we really did need to stay in place. The first thing is, okay, how do you

help people? Right, So of course your own employees, obviously we all worked on that first. So put that his job number one. We do own the weather Channel, and we had a site immediately put up that you could see in your zip code. You know, what were the cases, how many deaths, the cases growing, check on your parents, your kids, whatever it was, but one source, truthful data that was out there. We did that. The second immediately in parallel, and this is still going now, is work

on the cure. What could we do? That's us, you know, like authentically us. And it was we sponsored for the government and put together a high performance computing consortium which now has uh forty people who donated their high performance computing. We do have the top super comput years in the world. Think of it as if you could overnight buy a

billion dollar computer. That's what it is. That we've put together six hundred pedo flops and there's a hundred world class scientific teams that are running all of their analyzes on this, so they've contributed to the cure. Um. We took Watson and AI twenty five countries, asking questions everything you can. You can remember those days, like how much misinformation was out there about COVID and so all that got underway. Then we had a quickly moved to another phase.

Not quickly, it was months. But how do you return to work safely? Other CEOs have used the words terror and fear and felt like we got hit by a torpedo? Was there any amount of fear for you as as a leader, as somebody who's in charge of these tens of thousands of people, and you know, no, those are not words in my vocabulary basically, And I think because we do mission critical work, I've always felt that when things got the most tense, I'd become the most calm um.

And it is in those moments that people look to you to steer them through something. So it is a determined calm, is how I would describe it. Where does that come from in you? You know, I guess I've I've I've often thought about that, and I think it comes from my you know, my early time i've talked with you. I think before about my mother and single mom found herself raising four children. Suddenly she didn't have

an education. We spent time on food stamps. My mother was determined not to let that be the end of the story, found her way out with an education. Out of that. The rest of us all turned out well by watching her, and in that moment, it taught us, you know, never lets something define you. Only you define

who you are, so you take control of that. And I think that that is what has stayed with me through all this time, and whether it's a crisis or whether it is actually the reinvention of a company or myself, the idea that only you define who you are, not someone else. This is the exit interview with former IBM CEO and chair Jenny Remetti. Up next, how did she feel about being a quote woman CEO? And we go back almost forty years to Rometti's first day at IBM and what it took to rise to the top. I'm

Emily Chang. This is Bloomberg studio one point. Oh, you've seen so much innovation, so much evolution in your time at IBM. How do you think IBM is a different company today than when you took over a CEO. We now have our next enduring technology platform. That's what the

team has built, hybrid cloud in AI. IBM does its best when it has a physical technology platform, so things like the main frame was there for decades, still will be there for decades, modernized, modernized, it's on z and and to me, hyperd cloud AI is this company's next platform. And because there's a very serious set of work we do that requires the ability to run work wherever you need to run it, whether it's a private cloud, multiple public clouds. Build something once, run it anywhere, get a

scale advantage from that, not be locked in. Get open innovation. This was all behind our open hybrid cloud. I would love it if you would humor us and and go back a bit more in time and paint the picture for us of a young, genuine meddy walking through the doors of IBM as a systems engineer in Detroit in I came from a single mom who to get us off of food stamps, found her way back to get an associate degree so she could get a job, so

we could all go to school. So I start there. Um, I've had a scholarship from General Motors blessed them through Northwestern University, so I first did work there. Um so before that, then I went to IBM, so I worked their year. But as as I've told Mary Barra, I love what she does and she is passionate about cars. I wanted to apply technology a lot of things. So when IBM, and here's what I'll remember that first day. Of course, I did not have a blue suit, all right,

had not had one. I'm not sure I had any suits actually, Um, but this is this is back in time, right, so this is out of blue suit. I can remember coming home from work, taking my jacket off, putting on the couch, and my husband saying, do you realize the price tags are still on your suit? And that's how I remember my first day. And I thought, how gracious There wasn't a single person who said anything about that.

Your mom, how influential was she over the years, And she showed us that nobody defined your future, you do it. And we watched that and learned that by by just looking at what she did. I remember when you took

this job. In two thousand eleven, The New York Times wrote this big piece about your husband and how he was your support system and as all husbands should be, and it had a big impact on me because I think we often think our support systems should be invisible, um, but then we don't learn how other people do it. And I'd love to know more about how that partnership

evolved over the years, especially as you were CEO. I just had my four wedding anniversary and so forty years and you know what I say about Mark, uh, he is he's my biggest fan and that, you know, I think that makes all the difference in the world. And so that it's a partnership, and I know not everyone has been blessed like I have to have that kind of relationship, um where not only you know, I said, when you become CEO, it's a family job. It isn't as if it's just one person. So it's impact on

time my whole life. I traveled from my position as an example, and we always had a rule that never be more than two weeks apart from each other, and we oh, we never broke that rule. And forty years of my traveling, and so those are the kinds of things that I think, Um, you know, they keep you together,

build it stronger. And I have been really blessed and lucky to have someone like that by my side who took as much pride and was you tried to learn as much about IBM and be it's his ambassador, right. I feel he was IBM s a ambassador, uh, and took as much interest in my clients as I did. So it was a real partnership. And clearly I did nothing else but work, So I have such great empathy for women that you know, have children and all these

other responsibilities. I worked, and Mark really did take care of everything else while well, I did work. So I was lucky from that sense. Well, I'm sure you're selling yourself a little bit short, and he is very lucky to have you as well. UM, I will just say that. UM, you've said you've never thought about yourself as being a woman CEO, but that is how others have often thought of you. Did you find that frustrating over the years

or unfair in any way? So that that's an interesting question from two perspectives, because I've often felt when I first became CEO, I really did not want to be labeled that. I wanted to be recognized for what I could accomplish. I think many women feel that way. I think many people feel that way. Um, but I will tell you a different side of that story that as time went on, I did begin to realize this obligation

to be a role model. And you could see so many people that would react to not just what I did or what I said, but that it was you were a role model for their children, their daughter, someone themselves, and this idea that you cannot be which you cannot see.

I began to internalize that and did feel it was an obligation, and I've changed my view about that, and as my tenure went on, you saw me become, you know, more vocal about that and more involved in things because I realized, in whether it's a woman or any group, people have got to have role models to see what's possible, and and that is, in a positive way, an obligation there.

Now with it becomes I've said to other women as they've taken on their CEO roles, I said, get ready, because everything you do is magnified, everything you do is personalized. I can't tell you that that's fair, but it's what happens. And so just power through and do what it is you think must be done. So what is your advice to young women out there who want to be you,

who want to be leaders. It's probably the one piece of advice I am best known for Emily around the world, and it is my husband that taught me the lesson. It was early in my career. I had interviewed for a job, was offered it, and I was very nervous about taking it. I didn't think I was ready. I thought I needed a few more years. And Market said to me when I came home, he said, because I

told the person, let me think about this. And I'd come home and Mark said to me, Jenny, do you think a man would have answered the question that way? And in those moments, what I remember is that growth and comfort will never coexist, And so everyone I talked to I say, look, you just get really comfortable with being uncomfortable, and that when you're uncomfortable, that means you're

learning and growing. And so to your earlier question about fear, I view those moments as like wonderful learning opportunities, and that's my biggest advice. So have you replayed that story to yourself over the years as you've had moments where you're saying, man would not do this. Well, what I've replayed to myself more is go yourself at risk. Don't worry if you're nervous about something fantastic, or if you're not nervous, equally a concern, be sure you take on

something different and go learn something new. You're listening to my conversation with Jenny Remetti, former IBM CEO and chair coming up. Remetti leaves IBM at a crossroads and facing ever more powerful competition. What does the future look like and what does she think of her successor that's next. I'm Emily Chang and this is Bloomberg Studio. What point out stay with us? Ibm S shares declined during your tenure as CEO, and I wonder if that was frustrating

to watch? I oh, you're you know. CEOs always tell us they don't pay attention to the share price, but but it has to be distracting. And I wonder is there something you think investors just didn't get? Well, Look, we did return forty three billion dollars to shareholders during my time frame with with dividend and actually the dividing group by a hundred percent. But but clearly obviously you would want your share price to grow, so of course

to that. And I think the piece in what we had to undertake was the hard work to reinvent IBM for the long term. And that's what we went about and did. We had it to all ordered it to us. We did it, and so I'm really looking forward to now this next chapter for the company. IBM is hanging a lot of its future on hybrid. How will the company and how should the company differentiate itself from rivals

in hybrid like Microsoft? Okay, well, we're clearly the one that defined hybrid and we are clearly the one I would say the others have joined us now in this conversation, um, and so how we're clearly distinguished. We are the only one with the open hybrid cloud. So think of it real simple for a client, this means if it's open technologies, open source, open technologies, you can get access to innovation anywhere. Oh so A, I get more innovation. B. I can

write something once and it can run anywhere. It can run on another cloud as long as you have that hybrid open layer there, and that means it could run on any number of public clouds. It could run on your own cloud, it can run on your private cloud. You're on premise, okay, perfect. So when a pandemic hits and I worry about things where things are operating and need to move them, I am fit for purpose ready. And then once I do that, there's a skills battle

out there. Well, all better that I can only have one set of skills no matter what I do. And then of course you would guess it's two and a half times less operating costs. So we are the only short answer. We are the true open hybrid cloud. The tech industry more broadly is under fire for stifling innovation. Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, um. Having seen so many generations of technology, do you believe we're in a different phase. Do you believe these companies

are stifling innovation? Do you believe that legislation or a breakup is in order? Yeah? I don't think it's that simple of a question. And I don't know about stifle innovation because I take it back a few layers from that. I can remember early on defining we don't believe we own a customer's data. They do, we will only use it with their permission. Data belongs to the creator we. In fact, even the algorithms, the a either it comes

and drives out of it, it belongs to them. So you make your choices and then you hold yourself to be audited against them. I think this is more about companies being clear what they believe and then standing up to those things outside your competition, and IBM competition is formidable. What do you think are the biggest challenges that your successor Arvin Krishna will have to deal with. Well, look, I have extreme confidence in Arvin. He is exactly the man.

He's a brilliant technologist, architect, sees exactly what this means to be an open hybrid cloud. And so now Urban's transition will be as we first spin off the manage infrastructure business and then reposition IBM into growth. I mean we're positioned. And now, as he said to everyone, this is about a growth mindset and a culture of radical candor. And because he now takes it to that step of growth, when you look back, is there anything that you would

have done differently? I don't think about life that way, right because I always believe in that moment you make the very best decisions you can with everything that's happened. Then, IBM has a hand in so many futuristic technologies, whether it is quantum computing or AI. It's often so hard to imagine how these technologies are going to actually change

our lives in concrete ways. And given what you've seen over the last forty years, I'm wondering, if you would take us forty years ahead, how will our lives be different in because of technology? Mm hmm. Well, first off, there'll be lots of technologies you won't even know yet. They have not yet been invented, So I will tell you that all right, So on one hand, you should expect a lot of things you didn't know today. But I do believe that we're going to solve some really

tough problems for humanity over these next decades. Look, AI is in its really early stages still of deployment, and so you've yet to see the real benefits of AI to come in front of us. And in that time frame, quantum will be flourishing, and so you know quantum. The great sides of quantum are things like drug discovery, materials discovery that will be out there drugs. You know the speed of how it's done, and so you will see

a technologies you never saw before. You'll actually see AI used to reinvent businesses, and you'll see quantum come into real commercialization in that timeframe. Alright, Jenny REMTDI, outgoing IBM executive chair and former CEO, thank you so much for joining us on this edition of Studio. At one point, Oh, it has been wonderful to have you. Thank you, bloom Brook Studio. At one point, Oh is produce Usten, edited

by Kevin Hines. Our executive producer is Alison Weiss. Our managing editor is Daniel Culbertson, with production assistants from Malory Abelhausen. I'm Emily Chang, your host and executive producer. This is Bloomberg