After starting in IT as a systems engineer, Ginni Rometty began a career at IBM, where she climbed the corporate ladder to become the first woman CEO in IBM’s history. Recorded live at SHRM23 in Las Vegas, this episode is the second part of host Tony Lee’s interview with Rometty, discussing her recent book Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, as well as her views on the importance of inclusive employers and other key workplace issues.
After starting in IT as a systems engineer, Ginni Rometty began a career at IBM, where she climbed the corporate ladder to become the first woman CEO in IBM’s history.
Recorded live at SHRM23 in Las Vegas, this episode is the second part of host Tony Lee’s interview with Rometty, discussing her recent book Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, as well as her views on the importance of inclusive employers and other key workplace issues.
Listen to Part 1 of the interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Music courtesy of bensound.
Tony Lee:
Welcome to All Things Work, a podcast from the Society for Human Resource Management. I'm your host, Tony Lee, head of content here at SHRM. Thank you for joining us.
All Things Work is an audio adventure where we talk with thought leaders and taste makers to bring you an insider's perspective on all things work. Today, we're featuring the second part of my interview with former IBM CEO, Ginni Rometty, which was conducted at SHRM 23 in Las Vegas.
Ginni discussed her recent book, Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, as well as her views on the importance of inclusive employers and other key workplace issues. In part one of my interview with Ginni published earlier this year, we discussed her career progression and the strategies that helped her succeed on her climb to the executive suite. You can hear part one by using the link in the show notes for this episode, and I encourage you to check out and follow all of SHRM'S podcasts using your favorite podcast app.
Ginni, welcome to SHRM 23.
Ginni Rometty:
Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.
Tony Lee:
I want to start by giving a little background on Ginni. Ginni started off as a systems engineer, not at IBM.
Ginni Rometty:
Right.
Tony Lee:
You moved over to IBM, where you then spent your career moving up the ladder, a range of different positions ending with president and CEO, the first woman in the history of IBM to have that position. Correct?
Ginni Rometty:
That's true. Yep.
Tony Lee:
Indeed.
Ginni Rometty:
Go girls.
Tony Lee:
You then graduated to chairman of the board of IBM, correct?
Ginni Rometty:
Well, all along I was there.
Tony Lee:
All along, okay. After leaving IBM, you have worked on a book called Good Power that you're here to talk about today. I don't know how many of you know, and we kind of skipped this over, but Ginni has been credited with completely reinventing one of the world's largest companies. The reinvention of IBM during your period is unbelievable, and you applied these principles that you talked about from Good Power to complete that, right? That renovation and re-
Ginni Rometty:
Well, I learned them. I wish I'd known them ahead.
Tony Lee:
Okay.
Ginni Rometty:
So in process, yes.
Tony Lee:
Okay. Can you share a little bit more, maybe some practical steps, some practical things of how those guidelines, those principles, applied as you were working through the challenges?
Ginni Rometty:
Yeah, let me. Maybe even just one, just in the spirit of time. How many people here love conflict? My biggest takeaway of my time of transformation, it would be IBM's most difficult and many of the decisions would come to fruition past my retirement, and I knew that, but that's part of being a steward of a company at that age. But often my decisions, there was no clear answer. This idea of tension, there were multiple shareholders, multiple stakeholders, whatever you like. Everything was always in the gray, right? You made one person happy, another person sad. I mean, everything was never black and white. And that would teach me a lot about A, loving conflict and B, how to solve it.
So here's my one biggest lesson when it comes to tensions and conflict. First, it's true, you've got to believe, go into it and don't let it fester, for two reasons. One is that it just drains you of so much energy otherwise, the constant sort of in your head going over this conflict. So you need that productive energy for good stuff.
But the bigger reason is that I watched someone who loved conflict, and what I watched was they would always volunteer to go into a difficult situation. I thought, why are they always doing that? Nine times out of 10, they had a better relationship with whoever or whatever it was at the other side. It was about how they did it. So they didn't go in trying to prove their case. They went in always trying to understand the other's issues. It says a lot about how to unite, not divide people.
So my one thing was proactively go after conflict, but do it in a way that you're listening to learn. And many people don't listen to learn. The second thing I learned about conflict was there's always a third way through things, and this is probably the most important.
I did 65 mergers. I did 65 acquisitions during my time. I did treat them all like mergers, although there was no confusion who the banker was. But there's reasons people do one thing and others do something else. Sometimes there was no good answer. If I did this way, I made one group unhappy. This way, another group. Sometimes you have to sit in a bad spot until you've found not a compromise, my point is a third way through. And I really tried to teach that a lot, this idea to find the third way through things. Because it would advance both sides' cases, maybe not perfectly, but you would advance progress versus compromise can often lead to a bad outcome. And so, during my time, I felt all those acquisitions, that was one of the biggest lessons I learned was to always manage tension by finding the third way through.
But what I said earlier, Tony, is this idea of know what must change, what must endure, focus on how work got done, and then I tell you, it was the skilling. Because when I started, two out of 10 people had skills for the future. When I left, eight out of 10 did, and I learned a few things about skills that I think are important to this group. One was I learned to be transparent about skills.
There's that saying, I can offer you employability, I can't commit employment forever to you. But employability. But that means you have to be, and I have to be honest with do you have a skill? Okay, consulting, if you think of a two by two matrix, is your skill in demand or is it scarce? And then is it abundant in demand or scarce for the future? And is it abundant or not? Because if you've got an abundant skill that doesn't look good in the future, not a good spot to be.
So I would learn to be Transparent and really pay people on skill advancement because I think right now with tech, your skills are going to change every three to five years, and that creates a whole skills first culture more than it does anything else. To me, it changed HR from a buying of skills to a building of skills mentality, which is I know what many of you now today focus on. So those would be some of my biggest sort of right in that square spot learning.
Tony Lee:
So let's take that to the next step. So thinking about the historic approach of every hiring manager saying, well, they need at least a BA. I don't want to hire somebody without a BA. Is it time to reevaluate what is really needed for every job?
Ginni Rometty:
I would like to just share a couple stories with you? Because if I did nothing else with our time together with this group, it would be, I hope to invite you to this movement about skills first hiring. I'm probably one of the longest at this topic now. So I have actual data and I've been at it for maybe 20 years. Its roots are with my mom. Access and aptitude are two different things.
Then I would fast-forward in time to when Tony said, when I became CEO and we were hiring cyber people, 2012. Now, they're abundant, more abundant now, still scarce, but nothing then. But unemployment was 10% in this country, but I couldn't find anyone to hire. It would be sheer serendipity that I would walk into a meeting on corporate social responsibility, and they say to me, "Hey, we're at a high school in Brooklyn. It's very poor. We're going to work with the community college, give them some curriculum on cyber, mentors. Oh, and we told them we'd hire some of them if they got their associate degree." I come back, they're telling me, I say, "How's that going?" "Excellent. They are doing excellent work." "Okay." I come back at the end of the year, I say, "How many did we hire?" I could hardly hear the answer. I'm like, "What was that?" "Five." I said, "Wait. I need like 10,000." They said, "Oh, no, no, no. Everyone we hire, college degree or PhD." I said, "But you just told me they were doing a good job."
And this would set me on a journey that would take me to 30 countries. Back to Bill Clinton, there's not a government who won't see you if you want to talk about jobs. And I'd say, "Well, they did the job." So I had a whole workforce mainly of engineers who would say, "Well, you're going to dumb down this workforce if you hire non-college graduates." So we had time to study this. After one year, their business performance was equal, more retentive, more loyal, took more education than my degreed folks, and over time, 75% got their degree, and we had our first PhDs going through, and 90% black and Hispanic. I said, "So what is there not to love about this formula?" And it would make us, you have to kind of really look at yourself and say, should where you start determine where you end?
Back to My mom. She just didn't happen to have a degree, she was smart. So we went through every job description, and this takes, those of you doing it, it's hard work to write for a skill, not just a degree or an experience. In the end, now, 50% of our jobs required a college degree to start, five oh. 15% of the hiring when I retired was non-college degree to start, and the results are excellent.
And then it would be the murder of George Floyd. And as the business community was outraged, two of the most senior black leaders I mentioned, Ken Chenault, Ken Frazier, who ran Merck, they said, "No, no, no, guys. Forget about talking. We should do what business can do best. We should hire people." And I'm like, okay. They have a good vision, but they don't know how to do this because 80% of black Americans do not have a college degree. 65% of Americans don't have a college degree, and I would get involved skills first. If we instead get all these big companies, and maybe some of you have joined us, it's a group called OneTen, how to Hire a Million Black Employees in 10 years without college degrees into upwardly mobile family jobs, but with the skill. So you got to work the supply and the demand side on this topic, but to start, without.
I've probably never done something more fulfilling, and it's the same story as my mom over and over and over. Whether it's JP Morgan or Bank of America or Cleveland Clinic, I mean, you name it, many, many companies have now joined. There's a hundred. And it isn't just about black Americans, because actually the requirement of a college degree, at least in the work we did in a hundred companies, is probably inflated for 50% of the jobs, five oh, so it's like a false barrier. 50% of jobs are over credentialed for good paying jobs.
I know I sound like a speech right now, but to me, if you believe in democracy, democracy people believe in when they think, it means there's a better future ahead. And we're at this teetering point that not everyone believes there's a better future ahead for them and then enter AI, right? And so if you really want a great workforce, a diverse workforce, and you also want to, in my view, do what is the right thing for society, you would go down this journey. And it turns out it's not just about people without degrees, I think we all want to get paid for our skill. So it's really a way of a skills first culture, because once you hire people without a degree, there has to be a way to promote them too.
I mean, a great example is Delta Airline. Now, 95% of their jobs do not require a college degree, and you might think that last 5% is the pilots. Nope. Ed removed that off of pilots, and the day he did that, he got a thousand diverse pilot applications. Now, it does not mean you're flying with a pilot that does not know how to fly. It meant that they learned a different way, military, other things. So I hope I could convince you, if you believe in democracy and you want a great inclusive workforce, which I mean, this all starts with, I was trained that the more inclusive the workforce, the better the product. So this is not altruism, this is running a good company does this. I don't even remember your question, but that's my answer, okay?
Tony Lee:
It's a good one.
Ginni Rometty:
Whatever it was, that was it. So all right. Yeah. Didn't matter what he was going to ask me, I was going to say all that. Yeah.
Tony Lee:
And I'm going to follow up with that. SHRM has been very committed-
Ginni Rometty:
You have been.
Tony Lee:
... to hiring people.
Ginni Rometty:
That's how I met Johnny Taylor originally, was this work. Yeah.
Tony Lee:
Absolutely. Hiring people with criminal histories, hiring returning veterans, hiring workers with disabilities.
Ginni Rometty:
All of the above.
Tony Lee:
And you have made great gains while at IBM in all of those areas as well. So it's being inclusive, right?
Ginni Rometty:
It is. Yeah. When people say, "Well, what's the secret to all this?" I always say, "It does start with, do you authentically believe a diverse workforce and an inclusive workforce is a better workforce?" I say to my colleagues, "If you don't believe it, this is a really hard row to take you down because you got to look at everything about yourself. It is not just one thing. You don't just change the application and Oh, this is easy. I guarantee you, if you remove the degree on an application and don't do anything else, you'll continue to hire college degrees. It is so much bias that's built into everything about a system. And so now I'm not against college, okay? I am the vice chair at Northwestern now. But again, it's just we all have different starting points, is my view."
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
Ginni Rometty:
All right?
Tony Lee:
Exactly.
Ginni Rometty:
So you've been a great audience.
Tony Lee:
Please join me in thanking Ginni-
Ginni Rometty:
Thank you.
Tony Lee:
... for being here and sharing her insights. We really appreciate it.
Ginni Rometty:
Happy to sign books later.
Tony Lee:
Thank you.
Ginni Rometty:
Yep.
Tony Lee:
We are heading straight to the bookstore, so if you'd like to chat with Ginni and see a copy of the book, please follow us.
Ginni Rometty:
See you there.
Tony Lee:
Yep.
Ginni Rometty:
Yep.
Tony Lee:
That's going to do it for today's episode of All Things Work, which featured insights and advice from Ginni Rometty, the former CEO of IBM. Before we get out of here, I want to encourage everyone to follow All Things Work wherever you listen to your podcast. And listener reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility, so if you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to leave a review and help others find the show. Finally, you can find all of our episodes on our website at SHRM.org/podcast. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on All Things Work.