Speaker 1: These sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the next guest had, as
Speaker 1: we said earlier at front row seat to five decades
Speaker 1: of technological and social change. It's about eight years as
Speaker 1: CEO of one of the iconic tech firms of the
Speaker 1: past century. We're talking about IBM, and yet, as she
Speaker 1: says in her new book, she's not writing about technology
Speaker 1: or I am, but rather about how we can all
Speaker 1: drive meaningful change in positive ways for all. She calls
Speaker 1: this good power. We are so delighted to have with us.
Speaker 1: The former chairman and CEO of IBM, Jinny Rometti, her
Speaker 1: new book is good Power, leading positive change in our lives,
Speaker 1: work and world. She's here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio,
Speaker 1: Pens and Needles. So delighted to have you here. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. As big milestone two years in
Speaker 1: the making, right, it's always oh yeah, we never expected
Speaker 1: how hard it would be. That's what everybody says. I
Speaker 1: have to say, and I think Mike and I would
Speaker 1: both agree that when we started reading this, it start.
Speaker 1: It didn't start like I expected it too, And I'm
Speaker 1: sure everybody who talks to you starts there. But it
Speaker 1: is a very personal story, a very real and revealing story.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about your family and your dad leaving. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's one of the many moments I speak of, but
Speaker 1: because I think we're all shaped like, how we lead
Speaker 1: today has a lot to do with what we experienced
Speaker 1: in the past. And I was sixteen when my father
Speaker 1: decided one day that he abandoned my mom and our
Speaker 1: whole family. He didn't realize. I walked into the garage
Speaker 1: and heard him, and I heard him say to her,
Speaker 1: I don't care about you. I don't care about any
Speaker 1: of you. You can go work on the street for
Speaker 1: all I care. And how do you process that as
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old? Well, and you had younger siblings.
Speaker 1: I had younger siblings. Yes, I stood there, and I
Speaker 1: think I reacted because I watched my mom and she
Speaker 1: didn't cry, She turned around, she walked out. Effect I
Speaker 1: never saw a cry. And here she was the as
Speaker 1: I think now, thirty four years old, four kids, never
Speaker 1: worked a day in her life, hadn't gone to college,
Speaker 1: just barely through high school. But she was so determined.
Speaker 1: So what I the reason I start there and the
Speaker 1: only reason I wrote a boo. Do you know you
Speaker 1: were going to start there? No, absolutely did not know that.
Speaker 1: In fact, my collaborator helped me to start there, because
Speaker 1: it's a very vulnerable moment to start. But the reason
Speaker 1: is to celebrate what she did and how she reacted,
Speaker 1: because it's like I saw my grandmother and great grandmother
Speaker 1: both had big tragedies in their life, and I saw
Speaker 1: that she had power to change something when she had
Speaker 1: nothing else. And that's kind of the premise of the book,
Speaker 1: that we all have more than we think. And she
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not going to be a divorce, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be someone on food stamps. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to let it end this way. And she got
Speaker 1: a little bit of education, a little bit of education,
Speaker 1: a better job, a little bit better and she never
Speaker 1: did get a degree. But it's the other thing, Well,
Speaker 1: two things I learned she taught us never let anyone
Speaker 1: define who you are, only you are. He was never
Speaker 1: going to define her as those things. And it's so
Speaker 1: easy to go in the other direction. It is very
Speaker 1: easy to be defined as a victim and feel a victim.
Speaker 1: And the second thing was that you know someone's access
Speaker 1: to education in their aptitude are not equal. Meaning my
Speaker 1: mom really wasn't dumb. She's never had access to anything,
Speaker 1: and that would be a silver thread through my whole
Speaker 1: life that I would find to be true about you know,
Speaker 1: how people can get skills and into me. Why I
Speaker 1: work today on this when I think is so unfair
Speaker 1: in this country and it's very solvable. How many jobs
Speaker 1: have been over credential to require a college degree when
Speaker 1: they don't need one, and so many people in this
Speaker 1: country don't have one, especially when you think in a
Speaker 1: tight labor market, maybe things could be done. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: yet absolutely well, Jenny, one of the more touching things
Speaker 1: in the book to me was and you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: your mom was embarrassed that on occasions she would have
Speaker 1: to use food stamps and would actually drive to the
Speaker 1: next town over, so no one saw her. Really kind
Speaker 1: of heartwrenching moment in the book. But I wonder, you know,
Speaker 1: having seen the economy from both sides, now, what do
Speaker 1: you think about the social safety net in the US
Speaker 1: right now? Could it be done better? Is there a
Speaker 1: different way, better way to it? I am a believer
Speaker 1: in it right that it's needed and it's needed for
Speaker 1: what I saw with my mom, it's to transition people.
Speaker 1: It's not a permanent thing. And that's to me, what
Speaker 1: can be done better is the transition part, to transition
Speaker 1: you to a better place. That's what it did for us.
Speaker 1: It transitioned us to a better place. She had to
Speaker 1: do it till she didn't have to do it, and
Speaker 1: I really feel accompanying it has to be all these
Speaker 1: things about getting people the skill so they can get
Speaker 1: a decent job. And that was really, you know, what
Speaker 1: my mom fell into. But it's such a I think,
Speaker 1: a very practical I find it. I've had a decade
Speaker 1: of working on this topic that with some skill doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be a degree. We can give people lots
Speaker 1: of new jobs right now. So safety net until you
Speaker 1: get there, all right, So talk to us about getting
Speaker 1: to IBM in nineteen eighty one. My dad was an
Speaker 1: engineer too. You were an engineer, an engineer, open arms
Speaker 1: easy for a woman, Yeah, you know. Okay, So this
Speaker 1: is I'm sorry to have to say that's critical. I
Speaker 1: just meant yes, I'm going to answer that two ways.
Speaker 1: Because tech is not known for obviously for its diversity,
Speaker 1: so I would often be the only woman but my
Speaker 1: first three managers at IBM were women, and so I
Speaker 1: have to just credit it is a company of meritocracy
Speaker 1: and inclusion that goes way back before me. So I
Speaker 1: was really lucky to grow up in a place like
Speaker 1: that that for the most part, although for the times, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all relative. But the only thing I
Speaker 1: remember when I went, I mean, I never won a
Speaker 1: suit before I came home from my interview, as I
Speaker 1: wrote it, took my jacket off, and my husband's like,
Speaker 1: what's on your arm. I'm like, well, it's my first
Speaker 1: suit and that is the price taggion. Still I'm like,
Speaker 1: how gracious they never mentioned it, you know, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: well go ahead, Mike. Oh no, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: you know, so much has changed in the tech world
Speaker 1: in the last few years, with the trade war and everything.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking back to a boy it must be
Speaker 1: twenty years ago when Lenovo bought the PC business for IBM.
Speaker 1: I can't help but think that that deal would ever
Speaker 1: go down today. It was in this climate. So how
Speaker 1: do you see all of that going, This whole tension
Speaker 1: over tech between the US and China. Yeah, And if
Speaker 1: I've been to China once, I've been there fifty times
Speaker 1: and over my life, and to me this boils down.
Speaker 1: I've always said in the past, when people talk about
Speaker 1: it is coopetition and competition. I mean, I've really believed
Speaker 1: that the safest world is an interdependent world. That is
Speaker 1: the safest world, and that right now, I've also felt
Speaker 1: the only reason I was ever in China was if
Speaker 1: I could do something better than than the Chinese could
Speaker 1: do it. So, in other words, your only route is
Speaker 1: to out innovate. And so when we think about what
Speaker 1: to do now, I am really happy to see the
Speaker 1: US finally really take under a serious you know, you
Speaker 1: would call it a technology agenda for the country. Right,
Speaker 1: It's been a long time since we've really had one,
Speaker 1: And I go back in time you said, yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I've been around it five decades when some of our
Speaker 1: greatest technology innovations all started in the government and then
Speaker 1: we're commercialized by private sector. That was the way it
Speaker 1: was done. So now we finally have a national technology
Speaker 1: agenda and yep, okay, fine, let them go off. Now
Speaker 1: we got to of course protect our intellectual property and
Speaker 1: do it better. And I mean that is to me
Speaker 1: what the focus has to be and of course some
Speaker 1: of the most sophisticated of course, you know, those not
Speaker 1: aligned you don't want to have fall into the wrong hands.
Speaker 1: And so that's how it'll be. But I'd love to
Speaker 1: see it more around both competition and cooperation. But do
Speaker 1: you see, Jenny, that there's a clear division between the
Speaker 1: US and its technology powers in China doing it like
Speaker 1: it's not the globalization that we've been living for so
Speaker 1: long it is. What do I see a difference between
Speaker 1: the two types? Well, just meaning that there's going to
Speaker 1: be not the cooperation yet not as much cooperation, but
Speaker 1: there are things we can cooperate on the environment, okay,
Speaker 1: and technologies around the environment. I think about that. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side, No, we've got to have
Speaker 1: our own race and really be the best in the world.
Speaker 1: So much of the US prosperity has been driven by
Speaker 1: America being the leader in technology right by far across
Speaker 1: any other country, and that's what we have to continue.
Speaker 1: And so, like I said, that's why I'm glad to
Speaker 1: see it. And then so we will continue our out
Speaker 1: innovating part of that. Immigration needs to be part of that. Yes,
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I've always said that you know,
Speaker 1: skills have no passport, and this idea that ideas flow
Speaker 1: without a passport too. And I really believe in an
Speaker 1: essentral part of America actually is that ability to bring
Speaker 1: in skills and be a destination for people who want
Speaker 1: to innovate in a country that has rule of law
Speaker 1: protects ip. I mean, that is what brought people here.
Speaker 1: There are other countries in the world that you see
Speaker 1: when they have focused on that they've blossomed. When they close,
Speaker 1: they don't. So that is a that is a concern.
Speaker 1: Carol Master, Mike Reagan and our Bloomberg Interactor Brokers Studio
Speaker 1: still with us as Jenny Rometti, of course, former chairman
Speaker 1: and CEO of IBM, her new book out, Good Power
Speaker 1: Leading positive change in our lives, work and world. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: good power versus bad power? Yeah, great question. What's the difference?
Speaker 1: To me? The difference is good power does three different
Speaker 1: things versus about how to do hard things in a
Speaker 1: good way, in a good way right now, that would
Speaker 1: mean go toward attension, don't polarize yourself. So in other words,
Speaker 1: I really believe like, embrace tension. That's a good thing,
Speaker 1: do it respectfully and then just celebrate progress not perfection,
Speaker 1: and so much of what it's like my way or
Speaker 1: your way. Okay, I'm like, okay, we're never gonna get
Speaker 1: anywhere if that's the two views we're going to take.
Speaker 1: And so if you do those three things, really practice
Speaker 1: them in like especially tension. I learned to love conflict
Speaker 1: intention because I always knew something better was going to
Speaker 1: come out the other end if I would really go
Speaker 1: into it and listen. And it was. But intention is today,
Speaker 1: I know. But you know what I mean, Like the
Speaker 1: divides and I a conflicting view. It's gotten so ugly,
Speaker 1: so polar. I so I feel like it's its moment
Speaker 1: that that no, with all this division, there is another
Speaker 1: way to go about this, that that brings people together
Speaker 1: and it doesn't divide them. And so that's kind of
Speaker 1: what the book is meant to be. All these little
Speaker 1: tips about that I learned from watching lots of great
Speaker 1: people over the years on how they did that, and
Speaker 1: that you know, you ask young people today, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to be powerful? They're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I want to solve important problems. And I'm like, irony
Speaker 1: is you're going to need power to do that. And
Speaker 1: so it's how you exercise it. So I actually end
Speaker 1: the book with a handwritten note that it says your
Speaker 1: greatest legacy maybe how you do your work, not what
Speaker 1: you did. You don't, Jinny. When I think back on
Speaker 1: your tenure at IBM, what an amazing transition that company
Speaker 1: made during your time, you know, really moving from a
Speaker 1: hardware primarily business US to services, cloud, everything else. And
Speaker 1: you retired in twenty twenty. But I look at the
Speaker 1: stock price of IBM, and after an awful stock market
Speaker 1: last year, IBM pretty much reached a record high towards
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty twenty. So I feel like
Speaker 1: there's got to be some things you'd want to brag
Speaker 1: about from that from that era, you know, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't easy that. I'm sure you had some fights there
Speaker 1: to make these changes. What do you think the most
Speaker 1: important changes are. What's the sort of top line on
Speaker 1: your resume from from your tenure there that allowed IBM
Speaker 1: to become the company it is. Yeah, I mean what
Speaker 1: I did was give it a foundation for growth. I
Speaker 1: believe in me. The lots of IBM ers worked hard,
Speaker 1: and I think this striking point is it's not just
Speaker 1: what I did. We had to change how we worked,
Speaker 1: and so yes, we had to move into all these
Speaker 1: new areas. That's what everyone talks about hybrid cloud. We
Speaker 1: had to move you know, faster into AI, etc. But
Speaker 1: changing how so that you could work faster, that you
Speaker 1: could consumerize stuff because it's so unfair to say to
Speaker 1: a workforce, you know, hey, run a marathon, but do
Speaker 1: it in hiking boots. I mean, so, I think the
Speaker 1: biggest thing would be around changing how work was done
Speaker 1: and all of our work around diversity and inclusion. We
Speaker 1: had records on all of those. You said the magic
Speaker 1: word there, jinny AI. That's all I was waiting for
Speaker 1: you to talk about right now. So how do you
Speaker 1: see this all playing out? Chat GBT yah, Google's efforts, IBM,
Speaker 1: where's it all going? Well, look, I am a big
Speaker 1: believer in AI, but I have always believed it would
Speaker 1: make men better man humanity. Yeah, and that you've got
Speaker 1: to think of it that way. I've been at this
Speaker 1: for way decades now, and I think finally it's reached
Speaker 1: for us and everyone's conscious. Right, That's what chat GPT did.
Speaker 1: It made it like come to the forefront. Because AI
Speaker 1: has come in and out of interest over as winter.
Speaker 1: They call it AI winters, many of them. So now
Speaker 1: it's in front of everyone. To me, it is finally
Speaker 1: teed up the most important issue with technology, which is
Speaker 1: that if we don't build trust into this technology, it
Speaker 1: is going to have a very bad ending. And it's
Speaker 1: a sha we do that. We acquire regulators, like how
Speaker 1: do we ab I have a very strong view. Trust
Speaker 1: comes when you manage the up and the downsides of
Speaker 1: something at the same time. So that means, all right,
Speaker 1: I introduced yet all right, do people understand it? Is
Speaker 1: it explainable? We got to get that done quickly? Do
Speaker 1: they know how it's trained? Garbage in, garbage out? All right?
Speaker 1: And it makes sense? And then depending on the kind
Speaker 1: of problem I really tell people to use it for,
Speaker 1: they have a very different tolerance level I learned on technology.
Speaker 1: If it's searching, you get a wrong movie back, you
Speaker 1: don't care. If it's about your health, you care. You
Speaker 1: got a bad answer, even though your human doctor could
Speaker 1: be wrong some percentage of depending on the doctor of time.
Speaker 1: So this idea of trust means take responsibility for it.
Speaker 1: So the onus is on companies. It's gonna be on companies,
Speaker 1: the users and the builders have even greater responsibility. Out
Speaker 1: always felt that, and so that you are telling people
Speaker 1: a how to use it, be what it's trained with,
Speaker 1: or see let's say I train it and it's my
Speaker 1: proprietary data. I don't want that train thing going to
Speaker 1: the next guy. So we got to work on all
Speaker 1: this at once. You need regulation. Here's my big point
Speaker 1: on regulation, precision regulation. Do you like that you can
Speaker 1: open your phone with your face? That makes it pretty fast,
Speaker 1: gloves on you don't want to do, okay, but you
Speaker 1: don't like facial recognition for things like racial profiling. So
Speaker 1: we should regulate the uses of it, not the technology itself.
Speaker 1: Because we try doing that. People who make laws don't
Speaker 1: really understand the details of it that this is going
Speaker 1: to go nowhere, but they do understand the uses, and
Speaker 1: so that would be how I would do the regulation,
Speaker 1: because you want it to flourish. I have tried to
Speaker 1: whole technology trends back in the past. You can't stop them.
Speaker 1: Do you think this is like kind of the biggest
Speaker 1: thing that's going to be just I think it's a
Speaker 1: really big turning point, and I actually think it's got
Speaker 1: the propensity to make you and me do our jobs better,
Speaker 1: and so I think it's going to bring and can
Speaker 1: uplift a lot of people into better jobs. At the
Speaker 1: same time, we got to mitigate the downsides. And that's
Speaker 1: like active just like social media. Right, yes, great, great, great,
Speaker 1: until then there were some bad things. You'd like to
Speaker 1: have pulled back the clock and said, let's work on
Speaker 1: the bad at the same time. Does that making it
Speaker 1: a little nervous? Though that social media has had its problems,
Speaker 1: still get me from all of this we learned, yet
Speaker 1: we're not well. I think that now when you talk
Speaker 1: about all the companies involved, and you know, you talk
Speaker 1: about banks using a telcos. These are mature companies. They
Speaker 1: recognize that the one attribute they have the world cares
Speaker 1: about his trust. And so I think when you think
Speaker 1: that way, you're going to think twice about how you
Speaker 1: introduce it to the world. So I'm hopeful about that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's that risk of backlash too, you know, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: back too. Yeah, if people don't understand something, fear and revolt. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: remember when IBM's Big Blues started beating the chess mass.
Speaker 1: This is I learned very much trying to introduce technology,
Speaker 1: like introduce AI to doctors. I learned. The biggest thing
Speaker 1: was this was not a technology issue. The doctors had
Speaker 1: to make the time to change how they worked. They're
Speaker 1: very busy day in and day out. They didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: trust what data trained it. I mean, there was a
Speaker 1: you're we're seeing this play out one more time. I
Speaker 1: keep looking at my list because I have a million
Speaker 1: more questions and we run out of time. Thirty forty seconds,
Speaker 1: you do, I have to ask you because you're you
Speaker 1: see so much. You're on corporate awards JP Morgan, Cargill
Speaker 1: and others, Northwestern, I'm failing. You're no thirty seconds. How
Speaker 1: would you describe kind of this environment right now? You know,
Speaker 1: in many ways it's a perma crisis. I've heard used
Speaker 1: as a word. Right there's so many at one time,
Speaker 1: and so it's I think we'll be living with that
Speaker 1: uncertainty for a very long time. And on an up note,
Speaker 1: I think these are the moments when you can back
Speaker 1: to how I started this. Companies and people can define
Speaker 1: who they are in people's minds, and so I think
Speaker 1: right now I put a premium on trust if I
Speaker 1: was a company, on everything I did for my customers,
Speaker 1: my partners, etc. Because this is going to be with
Speaker 1: us for a long time, and when's the last time
Speaker 1: he ate tripe? That's what I want to know. You know,
Speaker 1: in spaghetti sauce, it tastes pretty good, very tender. I
Speaker 1: have to say it was a couple of decades ago.
Speaker 1: You have to read her book to find out why.
Speaker 1: Jenny Rometti, thank you so much. Good Power is the book.
Speaker 1: Check it out, everybody. This is Bloomberg Radio.