Book Review: "Who says elephants can't dance?" by Louis V Gerstner Jr
HarperCollins Publishers 2003 : ISBN 0 00 717087 4

UK £8.99

"Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?" provides a frank view of the challenges and changes executed by Louis V Gerstner, Jr., and his team during his time as CEO at the global IT giant IBM Corporation. The book, which is highly readable and scripted by Gerstner himself, is augmented by numerous emails and memos. It provides an interesting insight into culture, technology and management change during Gerstner's tenure. It starts with Gerstner's recruitment and highlights the almost catastrophic situation of IBM during the early 90s. The first steps taken to stop the 'bleeding' and return the organisation to profitability included creating a clear vision for the operation and management structures to support change.

Gerstner provides a refreshingly frank account of both external and internal forces driving change, and the principles and processes that Gerstner and his management team put in place to address them. The most significant change was attempting to turn the corporate culture from a political, inwardly looking operation, to an inclusive, customer centric, team culture, focused on performance. It was not an easy challenge in an organisation where previous measure and reward systems had been based principally on job tenure and IBM loyalty. Changes in corporate philosophy were paralleled by changes to product and IBM value offerings to their customers. Of particular interest is the charting of IBM's move from proprietary solutions to the world of open systems and its acquisition of technology to underpin its middleware focus, notably Lotus Corporation, whilst creating one of the largest IT services operations in the industry.

Of lesser value are a number of the appendices which detail Gerstner's email correspondence with his employees. Overall it is an insightful and thought provoking read, valuable to many who face the challenge of change in both large and small operations.

Allan Behrens

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