Louis v. Gerstner Jr.\'s Non-Fictional

¶ … Louis V. Gerstner Jr.'s non-fictional account, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, published in 2002 by Harper Business, for a quality improvement project was to provide a virtually unparalleled degree of inspiration and success as modeled upon Gerstner Jr.'s experience with IBM. Gerstner Jr.'s fixation on customer service and corporate culture was able to lead IBM from the brink of insolvency to its position of global dominance in mainframe computing, and technology, which was largely due to the improvement of the quality of its practices, its products, and its method of delivering these two to its customers. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance is an excellent reference for assisting with an organizational analysis plan and leadership assignment since it chronicles the minute details of Gerstner Jr.'s reorganization and reengineering of IBM's myriad processes from his perspective as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The CEO details the intimacies of his restructuring of the company with a methodology and systematic addressing of its various needs that outlines qualities, principles, and protocol which admirable leadership entails.

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance is comprised of five sections, the first of which, entitled "Grabbing Hold," chronicles IBM's financial woes at the time of Gerstner Jr.'s arrival in April of 1993; many were predicting the company would have to be broken apart and sold in individual pieces. Part I also details the recruitment process for a CEO of a Fortune 50 company, and provides a brief overview of Gerstner's professional background (he was a McKinsey consultant and spent 11 years with American Express before working as CEO of RJR Nabisco for four years).

The book's second part, "Strategy," explains that Gerstner Jr. decided to keep IBM together by shifting its focus to provide value to the customer in the marketplace. This shift moved IBM away from being internally focused and process-driven to being market driven and responding to needs in the marketplace. The third part of the book, "Culture" reveals how the CEO was able to create a company culture at IBM that empowered the individual employees to feel and be responsible for their customer's satisfaction. Under the auspices of Gerstner Jr.'s inspiration as a leader, IBM workers have gotten closer to their customers and base their success upon the latter's definition of success -- which naturally revolves around the customers. In such a way, IBM was able to develop a customer focus which yielded results throughout the marketplace and which was reflected in its revenues.