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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 8 page paper reviews Louis Vl Gerstner's book "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?," about his successful tenure at IBM during which time he turned the company around. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVDanEle.rtf
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This paper reviews and discusses Gerstners book about his experiences at IBM; its entitled Who says elephants cant dance? The Book Probably the most famous sound bite to come out
of Gerstners experiences at IBM is "The last thing IBM needs is a vision" (Duncan). This puzzled a great many people, since conventional wisdom tells us that we have to
have an overall vision, set goals, make plans, etc., in order to effect a turnaround; they wondered "how the strategy consultant from McKinsey and Company could say that a vision
for IBM was not the starting point of the turn around" (Duncan). But Gerstner showed that its possible to revamp any business, large or small, and anyone who follows his
book has a "road map" for how to do it (Duncan). When Gerstner came on board, IBM had "lost over 50% of the revenue from its major product line and
was running dangerously short of cash as margins and volume fell in tandem" (Duncan). What Gerstner recognized immediately is that "a long formal vision statement is not what is needed
to launch a turn around" (Duncan), Instead, what is needed is the ability to identify and resolve "a few key strategic issues" that are critical in "stabilizing a company" (Duncan).
Gerstner identified four immediate concerns: Should he break IBM "into many freestanding businesses?" (Duncan). How should he "change the economic model of expenses and margin to generate cash?" (Duncan). How
should he "re-engineer IBM for efficiency and profits?" (Duncan). And finally, "What unproductive assets could be sold to raise cash?" (Duncan). It took years to resolve these key issues, but
once "the critical decisions [were] made, there was no more debate" and it was the answers to these basic issues that "formed the backbone of the vision that would later
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