In the 1990s, IBM was losing relevance, fast. The company was seen as bloated, slow, and out of touch with the market. By the time the new CEO took over in the mid-90s, IBM had posted billions in losses.

Everyone expected the CEO to break it up. That was the plan on Wall Street. Sell off parts of the business, extract value, walk away leaner. But instead, according to the legend, he did something unexpected, just like his later counterpart at LEGO, he just pressed STOP. 

He asked his executives to set aside their assumptions and dig deep into the core question: What business are we really in?
Not historically, but now. Today. And what role do we have to play in the world our clients are actually operating in?

That process required hard reflection. It required executives to challenge sacred cows, to be brutally honest about where they were strong, and where they weren’t. But it worked.

IBM rebuilt itself as a services and solutions company. It restructured, re-skilled, and re-emerged as a technology leader for the next era.

What the CEO created in that reflection process was, in fact, the foundation of a new strategic vision, one that every executive had helped shape.

And that’s what this next activity is about: stepping back, looking forward, and asking: will this strategy be strong enough to take us where we want to go?