Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?

Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround

By: Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

Narrated by: Edward Herrmann

Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the company was on a watch list for extinction, victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.

Enter Lou Gerstner. The presumption was that Gerstner had joined IBM to preside over its continued dissolution into a confederation of autonomous business units, effectively eliminating the corporation that had invented many of the industry's most important technologies. Instead, Gerstner took hold of the company, making the bold decision to keep it together, defiantly announcing, "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision."

Told in Lou Gerstner's own words, this is a story of an extraordinary turnaround, a case study in managing a crisis, and a thoughtful reflection on the computer industry and the principles of leadership. Summing up his historic business achievement, Gerstner recounts high-level meetings, explains the no-turning-back decisions that had to be made, and offers his hard-won conclusions about the essence of what makes a great company run.

©2002 Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. (P)2002 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A well-rendered self-portrait of a CEO who made spectacular change on the strength of personal leadership." (Publishers Weekly)
"Edward Herrmann's pacing and understated connection with the material in this memoir makes the audio seem compact and relaxed. The writing is also outstanding, lacking excessive pride or self-congratulation....An essential volume for anyone interested in technology, large organizations, or IBM's miraculous rebirth under Gerstner's leadership." (AudioFile)

simply inspiring

i don't know if everything mr. gerstner wrote is 100% true. it hardly matters, as many lessons on how to view your company and how to make the best out of it were taken from the book. the book taught me practical ways to look at a dismal situation and turn it around for the better.

Compelling

Just to start off, I enjoyed the narration. It felt like it gave the book the right feeling.

As for the content itself, I found this to be compelling and engrossing. I didn’t think I could view management in so many ways. Yet, all these principles, values, and beliefs made complete sense to me. I felt empowered to find passion in my work and to continue improving myself in order to help solve problems. I strongly recommend it.

Interesting one

Narrator made it interesting to listen, though this was my first audio book I thought I will never finish it, but being ex IBMer I finished it.

Insightful

What did you like best about this story?

I liked the candor of Louis.

Any additional comments?

Louis gives specific details about some events, but for a lot of the time part glosses over the details and gives grand general statements. More specific retelling of events would be much more useful to the reader. He has a great story to tell, but unfortunately he is a weak storyteller.

This book mainly gave one great quote

"People don't do what you expect, they do what you inspect".

Read it, it's worth it.

inspirational

very inspiring and motivational rendition full of pratical wisdom nuggets. So much to reflect and apply

Moderate Start, Picks up FAST!

Upon starting this book, I felt like I was listening to a rather large ego telling me how great he was. But it rapidly became a great listen. I found his discussion of the evolution of the computer industry, and how IBM had to re-invent itself to fit the new paradigm, clear and true to what I've watched happening in the IT world.

Disk 5 was outstanding in his discussion of how he expected managers to be part of the solution, not spectators and supervisors of it. And his views on where the internet is going are extremely insightful.

A Must-Listen that finishes strong. A sure winner for anyone with an interest in IT, IT Companies, or our Business world and its IT components.

Essential work of business art - Truly Brilliant.

I was worried that the book would be a bit dated and the material no longer relevant. I could not have been more wrong. As a prolific reader of business books, I put this book in the top five.

The summary chapter towards the end in which Gerstner spells out his overall business philosophy in detail is true gold. This is required reading for all business people, large and small.

Great leadership story

Where does Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

A great book that takes your though the journey of Gerstner's entry into a technology field with little prior experience and completely turning the ship around at IBM, with some hard decisions on selling core businesses and turning IBM into the largest IT services company in the world. It is a similar setting to current times, although today they still pump out cash but the legacy business is waning as IBM looks to expand into secure cloud and hybrid computing and maintaining the IT strong hold.

What does Edward Herrmann bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Great narration for the story

Some good stuff but it’s beginning to show it’s age

I particularly liked chapters 10 and 11.

Lou teaches: get the strategy right and then be relentless in its execution.