Ginni Rometty: Reflections on a Career by the First Female CEO of IBM

Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners. It's our pleasure and honor to make the show for you. If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it. Even better, forward it to a friend. A big mahalo to you for doing this. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is Ginny Rometti. Ginny was the ninth chairman, president and CEO of IBM. Yes, IBM. She was the first woman to ever head the company. During her time there, IBM reinvented 50% of its portfolio, built a $25 billion hybrid cloud business and established leadership in quantum computing. Another reason GENIE is remarkable is because she supported the growth of an innovative high school program that prepar workforce of the future. She is currently the co chair of OneTen, an organization that works with U S companies to upskill, hire and promote 1 million Black Americans over the next 10 years into family sustaining jobs with opportunities for advancement. Ginny was named Fortune's number one most powerful woman three years in a row. She was also named one of the 50 most influential people in the world by Bloomberg. Ginny attended Northwestern University on a scholarship from General Motors and obtained her bachelor's degree with high honors in computer science and electrical engineering. She has a new book out called Good Leading Positive change in Our Lives, Work and World. It chronicles her groundbreaking path from living a challenging childhood to becoming the CEO of IBM. Hi, I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. And now here is the remarkable Ginny Rometti. I'm gonna start you with an easy one. Okay, ready?

I'm ready.

Do you think that Jacinda Ahern's resignation helps or hurts women who aspire to positions of power?

I've thought about that a lot and actually, one of the things she said I think was quite instructive for men or women because what she said was, I don't know that I have the energy for this for another term. And so I think that's both authentically honest and it's a tip to how hard these jobs are right now and to have the courage to say, look, I've given it my all and I think it's time for someone else to step in is a very honest answer. So I don't look at it that way, but there may be others who do, because I'm afraid we still are in those times. And I can remember when I was appointed as CEO, some of the headlines were all about being a woman and some pieces were written that said, you know, her success or failure will signal something for the entire gender there, and so that is a burden on her. But I took it as an honest, authentic answer. She certainly had a very difficult period and many things to contend with, and a young family too. I think that's right. And I don't view it as hurting things, but I'm viewing it through my lens.

Maybe she'll have time to come on my podcast now.

She might not.

And I would make the case, Jenny, that if someone says, oh, this just shows that women can't tough it out, etc. Etc. It says more about the person saying it than it does about saying anything about Jacinda.

Yeah, I thought it was a very clear statement of she had values and where she felt they were at that point in her life, which I think is an out weakness.

Now backing up. It just boggles me how anybody becomes the CEO, male or female, of IBM that just is climbing to Mount Everest in the middle of the night. So can you just give us the gist of what it takes to rise to the pinnacle of being the CEO of IBM?

I never started by saying or thinking I would be the CEO of IBM, and so I think that's somewhat instructive. I never stood at the base of Mount Everest at the beginning and said, oh, that's where I'm going. I viewed taking one step in front of the other as I went on, and I think that's still true today for everyone. I always said, take your job, do it the best you can, learn as much as you can, and that's your gateway to another job. Some people may say that's naive. In a company that has got really deep values and steeped in meritocracy, that's not a crazy thing. You just put your head down. Of course, there are politics and other things in any firm, but for the most part. And so how do you get there? On one hand, you just do the current thing. You're in better. But in honesty now, when I reflect back the other way, you get there, I did a lot of really hard things and really hard and took a lot of pivots. So in other words, I was going one direction, then I pivoted another direction, then pivoted another direction. So I think between the degree of difficulty in a sports analogy and pivoting between, that's got a lot to do with it. Because by the time you're in a position to run something like IBM, you've not only experienced many, many parts of a business, you've Been through a lot of economic cycles within the business. So you've seen ups, you've seen downs and so all those kind of add in. But honestly Guy, I say to a lot of people, look, I was trained to fly a 747. I probably could not do a little airplane. But the big 747's got lots of gears, it's got a lot of visuals, displays, there's a co pilot, there's a crew behind you and when you're in a little plane by yourself, okay, now that's a different game. So I don't think one is easier or harder, they're just different.

I'm going to digress a little and I want to just find out two things. So when you say that Grand Trunk let you in with Mark on a Sunday to access their PC, my mind immediately went to, you're telling me they let another company's person just have free reign in their data just like that? I mean it was a different time. But is that true? They just let you in and said, ginny, have at it on Sunday.

Guy, you're talking to about one of the stories in my book of where I kind of learned a lot of things. Just said hands on, go do it. Now. This is the 19, late at 70s, early 80s and what they did do, this was a PC that was not yet in production and there were test files on it. So. But yes, they did let me in their office. It wasn't as if I could have, I guess rummaged through everything else that was there, but I didn't do that obviously I did what I was there to do, but it was a different time and space and I mean it just reminds you of how much riskier and secure and how much more advanced the world has come in a few decades. But in fairness, not a production PC and not a live data set. I worked on clones of things, right? So I couldn't, I couldn't hurt too much.

And plus Mark could watch football the whole time.

Yes, yes, he was busy. Yes. I mean, you know, it's both an interesting statement of how to learn, you know, that even at an early age, and I still believe in this even more today, that people learn hands on, apprentice, experiential, it's like the best way. And at the same time it's a statement about my husband who I've now been married to for 43 years. And even at that early point, I mean he was like a Sunday in a city and it's empty, you're not going to go Alone. Now, I'm not going to help you do what you're going to do, but I will go down there. And when I say he sat there and watched television, this was when the Sony television was probably the size of a brick and the screen was about 1 inch by 1 inch. Right. Most people will never even remember these things. And he sat there with that thing while I just worked away for hours upon hours. And so it was the beginning of like many hours he would spend supporting you without complaining.

So during the integration of pwcc, I'm going to read a quote and the quote is, if you can't get this turned around, you're no longer welcome as a member of the family. So I take it that's an IBM executive saying that to you.

That's another. Yes, another IBM person saying that to me. Right.

And when you became CEO, what happened to that person?

They had changed their ways. And I, I'm careful because I'm not a name and blame kind of person at all. And I always view the way forward. And to me, often if you have nothing good to say, you don't say it kind of thing. But there was a really big lesson in that. And Guy, you're quoting a piece of the book where I'm talking about how to build belief as a principle, right. When you're going to do something. And I want to step back. The book Good Power is about doing really hard things, but do them in a positive way. And in my head, again, in retrospect, from what I learned from a lot of people was there's always tensions. And I think that's really true today in this world, there is no clear answer to a lot of things. There's a plus and a minus, a short term and a long term. You're hurting one group and helping another group. There's always this tension that you should embrace, but do it respectfully. And this is a story about respect and celebrate progress. But it is really about respect because I think you can do really hard things, but you can do them in a very respectful way. It doesn't require yelling, bullying, fear. And again, that story as it goes on to say, I can remember after letting it sink into me and I was doing something super, super hard. And once I kind of got that emotion out, yes, there was truth in what the issue was and I focused on that. And you know, there's a lesson for we all have critics and critics cannot define you. I listen for what might be true, but then I got to discard the rest of it, right now, for me, it was a lesson in not to treat people that way. And that's where you read in the book. Sometimes people say, I had a velvet hammer. It didn't mean don't be direct or critical. But you can do that in a way that lands more constructively for people right now, I went through that and I learned a lot from it. And I learned things I didn't want to do as a result of it.

And do you still think that women are judged more harshly in these corporate.

Settings, Guy, do you think that? Let me ask you that first, and I'll tell you why I'm going to ask you that.

Do I think that?

Yes. You've interviewed 175 people. What do you think?

Oh, absolutely. Positively, without an ounce of doubt, women are judged more harshly.

Yeah, it's very interesting because as I wrote the book and got a lot of input as I was writing, right. There was one angle about me being a woman in the book. And I want to bookend sort of two things to answer that question, maybe three. It is amazing to me, back in time, way back. And again, I will answer it directly. I tell a story because when I was named, I did not want to be known as a woman. And even all through my career, I would always say, hey, just notice what I do. And I'd given a big presentation down in Australia. Man comes up to me and I'm thinking he's going to really ask me some details about my theories. And he says to me, I wish my daughter had seen you. And in that moment, now this is back in the 80s, I say to myself, look, I can profess I don't want to be a role model. They'll recognize me for my work. But the fact is, other people, it's an obligation. I have now gotten to this position, and whether I like it or not, I am a role model. And I could either have shunned it or embrace it. And I then began to embrace it. So this is the 80s now, and I want to fast forward to now the book. And I've talked to some of my colleagues. It is interesting to me to listen when I've told people about the book, sometimes even from my men friends. I can't wait for my daughter to read it. I said, really? How about you? I want to buy these for my women in the company. Oh, really? What makes you think it's just for women? And okay, that's a span of 40 years in between. And so as much as I'd like to believe there isn't a difference. There is now, I think in some ways it made me better because I realized, hey, every time I said something, somebody was going to remember it. So this is what led to this cycle of me always preparing. And I ended up better for it, by the way, but because I'd be remembered the other side. One of my friends said to me at one point, we were talking about media and this and that and said, do you realize often when a company, a woman's running, it's like she did this and her name and when it's a downside of another, sometimes it's a man and it's the company's name. Right? And I really do believe it. I said, look, like it or not, because there are so few of us, I do think what we do is magnified and personified often. And so that is true today, right now, as much as I would have thought 40 years later, it's still a fact that there is this. Whether you call it more critical, whatever, whether it's because you're one of whatever. And I think there are other groups of people who could say the same thing. So hopefully by reading the book, I'm trying to both touch on that at many different times in the book that I'm cognizant. Yes, I am a woman in a particularly male dominated industry as well.

So what's your advice to a woman listening to this who believes she is being judged more harshly? What's she supposed to do?

First off, I always say don't let anyone else define who you are. Only you do. And sometimes when that has happened to me, I worked with a great, actually general counsel who would say to me, jenny, remember who the crazy one is and it's not you. And so when it happens, or confront it, so discount it, confront it. Like the story you opened up our little chat with about. When I was told some things, I could go confront those things, right? I could go confront the person. In fact, I would learn to run towards that conflict over time. That I would learn, hey, if I thought this was not fair, I went and said something and more often than not it would stop and hopefully, you know, like learn a lesson. But I would even back up further for a lot of women in that I mentioned earlier, why did I study so much? Why do I believe in this lifelong learning for everyone? In some ways, for me it was a confidence point. So the more I knew, the more confident I could be. So that's one thing I recommend, the proactive side of this. Why did I go into engineering? Because I practiced as an engineer, I did as a computer science engineer for a long time, but it was more because I like to solve problems. And I even try to tell women today more and more, please go into the stem fields if you don't want to be an engineer. Super. But what it does teach you is how to take really complex problems and break them into pieces and solve them. And no matter what you want to do in life, I guarantee that'll be a characteristic of it. And so there's merit to that. So on one hand I say to women the kind of things like to do to fortify yourself in that environment. And on the other side, I would say if you're in that kind of environment, I would actually say something and take it head on. That takes courage, by the way. And I didn't always do it, but you'd be surprised more often or not it changes.

But a skeptic might counter that, Ginny, and say, yeah, in IBM you should confront it, but not in the company I'm in.

That's a fair point. And I am very cognizant. And in fact, I say this a few times. I was really lucky to have worked in companies that have really deeply rooted bottoms. Right? So like you say in IBM, even its predecessor companies hired its first black employee and women in 1899. Right. We had equal opportunity way before like a civil rights amendment or anything like that. So I am like steeped. When I was growing up in the company, I get graded on if my people had development plans and if I had at the time, the world would have been a diverse team. Did I have minorities would have been the word. This is 40 years ago. So to me it's normal. And so I actually understand that. And my point on that is you choose where you work. And there are a lot of companies that have steeped values and in fact, younger companies, I think it's something to not skip over. It's like a tree with roots. Because when the wind blows, when your roots are shallow, you flop one way or another. Versus to me, in this world, particularly with so much conflict in things, like I said, tensions, value based decisions are really super important. And you get taught that early in your life. I mean, I had a manager who, my very first time I was a manager and I came to him and I said, hey, some people are complaining. I have this top performer and he's telling bad jokes, very derogatory, misogynistic jokes. What should I do? And he was unequivocal. He said, you tell him once and Then you fire him. I don't care who he is. And just that boom, boom, that's what you do in these situations, gets ingrained in you, right, about what is appropriate and what is values based. Right. That to me was the beginning of many values based decisions you would make over time. And it would lead to, when I was CEO, how I interact with government no matter what. So what I would say to someone like that is if you really work for a company that you don't agree with its values, I believe you should leave. That's what I would say. Because we do get to pick. We're not prisoners, we're not victims. We can move, hopefully. I realize not everybody's in the same position, but hopefully you can then move somewhere that does. And I think more and more people do want to work for companies that have pretty rooted values. Right? Because it's never what you say, it's what you do that matters.

The gospel.

Oh God. I'm not trying to preach to you at all. These are pretty hard learned lessons.

Okay, so you know, when Fred offered you that position in charge of global insurance, you didn't use the phrase, but I think you experience the imposter syndrome. Syndrome.

That's interesting.

So what's your advice to women? To get over the imposter syndrome.

Yeah, that's very interesting. So you're speaking of. Actually it's one of the most important milestones of my, like, personal self reflection of my career. And I was already perhaps 10, 15 years into a career and I worked for Fred, as you mentioned, and he was going to get a new job and he said to me, I thought you should get my job. And I was like, whoa, I am not ready for it now until you've said this. I never thought about that as imposter syndrome, by the way. So this is a good way for me to think of it. And I said to Fred, I'm like, fred, hey, I am not ready. I've run half your business, not all of it. Give me a couple more years and then I could do a good job. And he thought it was crazy. And he said, look, go to the interview. Which I went to the interview and person offers me the job and I say to him, I want to go talk to my husband. Okay. Looks at me, I kind of remember kind of a little bit of a pause. I go home, I talk to my husband, and he sits there patiently like always with me, and he's just shaking his head and he knows many of the people I work with and he says, do you think a man would have answered it that way? And I'm like, no, I got it. And he's like, you know, Jen, I know you. You're going to be bored in six months saying, you've already learned everything. Time to go. He's like, I don't understand why you would react that way and what it crystallized. It's a phrase I think I'm pretty almost famous for because I go, growth and comfort never coexist. There's a however to that little corollary. And I learned even if I was nervous inside, I did not have to always show that that was actually a really natural feeling. And I'm telling you guys, I've gone around the world how many women feel, and it is more women than men. I have to say this. It doesn't mean there aren't some men, but more women than men will exactly agree with this feeling and that they're so harsh. And there are studies, you've seen them that say, you know, when asked about a job, a woman will tell you eight things she can't do. A man will tell you eight he can do. As an example, this is not me making that up. And so I use it as an example for many women to say, hey, look, recognize. It's in there and it's okay. Doesn't mean you have to tell everyone. At the dinner, I learned to not always articulate that then, because actually Fred said to me, ginny, don't do that again. And I said I understood what he was saying, but it made it so much easier for me to take on risk as time went on. Because I'd say to myself, I am going to learn a lot. Like, the more I feel nervous, the more I'm going to learn. And as time would go on, even whether it was clients, I would look for these situations because I'm like, whoa. Or I'd say, oh, my God, I have not been nervous in a long time. I got to do something else. This is not good. I'm not learning anything. So I never thought of it as imposter syndrome. And I guess that is it, because you're kind of like, I can't do that. I don't belong in that circle. And yet you do. When you took stock of what you had. Nobody has perfect credentials for a job. Nobody does when they go to their next job, by the way, I think it's true. I said it for countries, companies, look at our country. In order to get better, you got to go through these phases. And I was just texting with my little nephew last night away at school and he was telling me about how uncomfortable he is and I'm like, you are going to grow out of this experience. Right? All that uncomfort. And now I actually feel good about it. And it's funny how it changes your disposition.

The long and the short of it is you have become Baba.

Yes, I have. Yeah. The only thing better is I could work on a farm. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that is really something. My great grandma, who did not speak any English, came here from Russia and she was a cleaning lady. And thank God, because when my father abandoned our family, left us with nothing and no money, food stamps on financial aid, it would really be the money she had saved as a cleaning woman working the night shift that would help my mother buy a house. It's just an incredible story about hard work. But she and my grandmother, I always say I come from this hard stock and all women that all had tragedies in their lives. But it did teach my brothers and sisters and I all that this idea you asked about earlier that hard work pays off. Now, you may or may not agree with that guy. I don't know. But it is so ingrained in me that hard work is associated with moving forward. Right. That I even sometimes feel guilty if I haven't worked hard on something and it works out. I think, oh, that was just lucky because hard work is what yields a positive outcome. And it didn't matter what they did when my grandma, whose first husband died when he was very young, second husband dies again. Again. This is back in the 40s, 50s, she had a lamp store and she's hand sewing lampshades. She taught me how to sew and when I couldn't afford clothes, we sewed them together, but didn't even think twice about it. Right. It was like you just have to keep moving forward. You find a way to exist and you find a way to earn money and you find a way to still be happy. And I think that's what I saw from my great grandma, my grandma and my mom. I mean, they would all have a tragedy for different reasons, but all three viewed, hey, I'm not a victim. I am going to go forward. They never said these words. This is what I believe. My brothers and sisters are very successful. No one would ever think we would come from that to this. And I think that's from just watching that idea that doesn't matter. There's always a way forward and that you can find it in some way to at least take a step forward.

You Opened the door here. So I'm going to walk right through it.

Go ahead.

And I have to say that.

This.

Is probably the only business book I have ever read where the opening chapter is about your father abandoning your family. And this is a bizarre question, but what might the arc of your life have been? And also not just your life, but Joe's, Annette's and Darlene's life. What would the arc of your lives have been if your father stuck around and was supportive and, you know, the whole thing, In a sense, he created a very challenging situation for all four of you that you pushed past and became what you are.

Yeah.

Now, this is not a recommendation that men abandon their families in order to optimize their kids.

But, yeah, I'd be curious your view of all the people you've interviewed, because I just happened to be with a big group the other day, and the question was, can you succeed without adversity? And half the group said no, and half the group said yes. And there was a discussion about people who said, look, I'm really concerned. My children have never really had a hard time and what has happened. And I even remember when I wrote my college application at the time, again, back in the mid-70s, I even wrote about that. I really don't feel bad that out of this tragedy, it taught me. It didn't diminish me, it made me stronger. There are days I've said, look, in the end, he really did us a favor in how we each internalized it differently and were able to move forward. And at the moment, it was, my goodness, I can't say that was good for my poor mother. Right. You have to go back in time to the 70s, and here she's in her early 30s with four children, no money, nothing past high school, never worked outside the home, and she's left with nothing. And while we never saw her cry, I was there. He didn't know I was there. I walked into the garage. She was telling him how much she needed money. And he said, I really don't care what happens to you or to any of you. You could work in the street. And in that moment, to me, that closed a door, and I could. I can remember just thinking, God, my poor mother. And we never, like I said, saw her cry. I know she would confide in her sister at times, and, you know, the door would be closed. But she gradually then got back up and took some courses at community college, got a little more to get a better job, a little better first. It was just like doing credit card approvals third shift and then in an office, et cetera. She eventually ended up with a very good job. 25 years at a hospital as the administrator for a sleep clinic. But I only go past and say all that, that in the end I think my mom would say she was probably better off too. She would also say, I don't know what I did to make you kids like this. Oh, I mean she did everything right. It was watching. And I think there are many people like me that have had this kind of experience in some way with something of their family. And that adversity to watch someone push through also teaches you though, like I always say, the biggest thing I learned from my mom, she was not going to let him define who she was. That was it. She was not a victim, she was not a divorcee. She was not unemployed. She was not on financial aid. No way. It's another one of those that I take with me pretty far because I had to learn. And there would be times it would get away from me. Only I could define who I was. And then I would learn, hey, if I didn't define the company, other people would, would come back over and over again over time, but back to what would have happened otherwise. I don't know. Every one of us has a strength of our environment. But I think it talks so much about things like I watch my mom aptitude and access early in my life. I conclude those are two different things. My mom wasn't dumb. She just didn't have access to a lot of things. This permeates my whole life. From that forward, it's what I do today I'm working on 110, which is about putting people without college degrees into upwardly mobile middle class jobs because their jobs are over credentialed. And so I'm like, these people just didn't get access. They have aptitude. I've proven that after working on this a decade. Zip code brains are distributed evenly by zip code around the world. And so I think, would I have believed that if I hadn't gone through that? Maybe I would. I know you said it's the first business book you read like that, that first piece, the first part of how it starts. It's called the Power of Me. I would tell so many people and this was hard for me to do, but to sit back and I think there's a line I wrote about who do you see when you close your eyes? When you think back to your early life, who do you see when you close your eyes? And if you do it A little while, you'll think of these people and you'll think of these roots. I think of who you are today. It started way back then.

Did you ever reconcile with your father?

I did not. I just watched too many things continue to happen. However, I did see him before he died. My sisters asked me to go with them, and I went with them. And they needed me and I went for them. And so in my mind, I owed so much more to so many other people. And so it wasn't as if I harbored anger to this day or anything like that. I had just moved on is how I would describe it. But I wished him no ill will. And in those moments, I did go there at the end.

So, switching gears, you discuss stakeholders as opposed to shareholders. And with your hindsight, I'd like to know what you think the purpose of a company is. Is it to optimize for customers, shareholders, employees? What are we talking about when you say you know a company exists in order to do?

Okay, so, guys, I think you actually know the answer to this question and in your heart, from having read your books, too. I think society gives a company the license to operate in the end of the day, and that only happens if, over time, you do the right thing by any number of stakeholders, of which shareholders are an important one. So I don't find this as a big revelation. In other words, you got to do the right thing for customers, for your employees, for your shareholders, for your communities. You're in. And at any one point in time, something can be out of balance for sure, because you can never get a win win always across all. So over a long arc of time is what I mean. You do this balance that's like circle, a virtuous circle that you go around. Because there was a lot of discussion about this when the Business Roundtable reissued a statement on the purpose of the corporation. And it basically said what I said, that you have multiple stakeholders. So some people call it stakeholder economy, stakeholder capitalism out there. But to many of us, especially companies that had longevity, to them, they were like, I think this is how I do operate. At least I sort of try on most days. And if I don't have profit, I can't even do these other things. So I have to always be one step forward, one step back, two forward. So when I say stakeholder, it's because I believe it's a really important point. And I do see companies that don't quite understand. So we published it, so hopefully everybody could raise their vote, as they say, the level you know, all people could aspire in all companies and some of us can keep aspiring to do it better, which we should. And it's really about values at the end of the day. Okay, so by the way, some of these are really hard things because you will make decisions that will impact one of those in a negative way at any one point in time. But it is the collective set of your actions. Just like I've had someone say to me, I do a lot of work around this topic of skills first and that you should hire people not just for their degree, but their skills. I've had people in the media say to me, you should just be focused on shareholder. Why are you focused on this? And I said, don't you? I need good employees. So this is also in my interest. I mean, I live at this intersection of business and society and I've just seen that play out a million times. Because if I can then get good employees, A, that's good. B, if society, particularly in this era, if everyone thinks this technology is going to really ruin their job, this is not good. We end up with a really fractured set of socioeconomic world we live in. People have not. This is a bad place. This goes for business as well if that happens. And already we see the roots of all this. So to me, they're all connected. And people would say that about the environment today too. IBM said, I can remember this guy, I'm in an investor meeting and we happen to bring along our environment report. At that time I was sitting there and it might have been our 35th. I didn't even think about that as being weird. And it is apparently the longest distribution of any environment report of any company. Right? We were doing it back. It's not. My brilliance is my people way, way, way generations before me leading the company who said, oh, we better care about this at the same time, right? If we're going to be here for 100 years, we could get into a long discussion on this that you also steer for the long term and manage the upsides and the downsides. So that's what stakeholder capitalism and why I'm so firm on it. And I am mystified by the things I see written against it. As I say, when you write, you can write in black and white. Where I have to live, it's gray and no decisions ever clear like that.

Now what if your nieces or nephews ask you as they're about to interview? How can I tell from the outside looking in that a company has taken the higher road? Because every Company says we believe in diversity, self actualization, good for the environment. Everybody says that. So how do you tell.

Look, I think a long time ago that would be hard because people could say and do different things. I think today is an awful lot of democratization of information out there. Not all right, by the way, but you can sort of do some of your own analysis. And you will find in big companies you'll find groups, happy groups, sad. So it's, you got to look for the arc of the direction of things and I think there's enough external evidence. And even now with everyone producing data around these things as well, my diversity numbers, promotion numbers, equity of pay, etc, I think there's enough signals that you can begin to see it. And if anything it's just talking to people that work there, which many people do. So I don't think it's as hard as it used to be to find the answer to that.

So next question your niece or nephew says is how do I achieve work life balance? And let me give you a hint before I let you answer this. I don't want to prejudice your answer, but personally I believe work life balance is a myth. I'll just leave it at that. So now your niece or nephew asks you, work life balance.

All right. I would tell them you probably won't like my answer then, but that maybe doesn't matter. I came to find every individual defines that differently. I like to work. So when people say, oh my God, you work all the time, I do it because I like it. So you do not have to do what I do. This is my choice. The companion to that is. I also learned that if I was waiting for somebody else to draw boundaries for me, no way was that going to happen. That companies, if you want to almost think of them in that way as an innate object, they will take all I could give. I've never had a boss or a company that if I wanted to work 24 7, said, well, I actually had one boss say, please slow down, I see the wear and tear. But that was one out of a gazillion. What I would tell them, in short is, hey, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have to be the one to set the boundaries. And can you do that now? Again, I worked for companies where I could say, look, I'm not going to do this or I'm going to make time for this and just no, I had to have some power to say those things. And at first I thought, oh no, what's the ramification of this? And Let me tell you what I learned 95% of the time. No ramification meaning either positive. Understand? Oh, it wasn't that important anyways. Can be done, you know, no problem. Just had this conversation with someone the other day who had an interview for a position they wanted to go to, but it was on exactly the day their child was doing something very important and the person was really hemming and hawing and gonna. I said, no, this is crazy, this is crazy. I said, you tell them you can't do it on that day. And, oh, I don't know, I shouldn't. In the end, she did. And the, the company's like, oh, okay, no problem. Let me give you two more other dates. I said, you will sacrifice this. And again, this becomes easier as time goes on. I'm not under an illusion about that. But I was still pretty early in my career when I finally realized because I, I was a toll, it was taking on me. And may I make one other point about this is I think it's really important. Part of your own resilience isn't just work, life balance. Like, you know, from the book. I, I write quite a bit about resilience, how to withstand critics and all. And it comes from relationships and your attitude. But relationships do take some time. It's not quantity, but it's quality of time. You have to give them. And it is about what you give, not what you take from people. So you have to decide that's important. And in the end it isn't that it's unrelated to your work because you're going to do a better job at work. That's the other thing I tried to say. I had to learn that, that, you know, if I was refreshed, I would actually be more productive. I would have this discussion guy with my husband all the time. He would say to me, if you can't do your job in eight hours a day, you just are not very productive. No, he's joking with me because I would work way more. But there is some merit to this point of. Wait a second. I can tell I need rest in order to be productive or I need to have some diversions, I need to do other things. Do you feel that way? It made me better at the end of the day when I put some, you could call it balance, but I put some variety into my life. What would you say to it when people say it can I agree, it is a myth. I mean, forget about it. No one's going to give it to you, but you can create whatever sort of Compartments you want, let's put it that way. How would you answer your own question?

The message I took from your book is that at different stages in your career you have different priorities. And as I read your book, the first stage of your career, you weren't exactly trying to achieve work, life, balance. It was just work, work, work. And people may find this very interesting, but I love this discussion where Mark said, yeah, let's agree that we see each other at least once every two weeks. A millen probably is not having that discussion.

Yeah. But there's an interesting twist to that lesson and I agree. And so some things have changed, but I was already traveling a lot for work when Mark said that to me. Now why was I traveling? Thank God IBM gave me the option. Instead of moving, I traveled. Now what did that allow Mark to do? He kept his job, he kept his friends, he's staying up, family, he's had stability. So there was a benefit to that. You know, every family makes that decision. Right. You know, but to me, you thought a way through and he's like, we can do this, I can stay here, you could travel. And then. But let's just every two weeks. And we stuck to that. Look, marriages, I, you know, they're a hard thing, but takes two people to work at it. Right. And so being 43 years married, as I said, that's. We're probably in a small number of percentages out there, but obviously well worth it. But it just takes that effort like any relationship takes that effort. Right.

Let's switch to your current life now. So let's talk about skills first. Do you think that it is a fix for the lack of college access for some people until there is college access or is it a permanent part and style of education?

The latter. And I've come to believe that some for practical reasons, but some for also philosophical reasons. And if I might, a couple quick stories. One you already started on our. I already shared about me realizing with my mother that access and aptitude weren't equal. I would fast forward in time when I needed cyber professionals. Just circumstance. It was the early 2012. Unemployment's almost 8 to 10% in the country. I can't find anybody to hire. I think isn't that odd? Here we got unemployment, yet I can't find people and they don't have the skill. Complete serendipity. I walk into a meeting which is at that time corporate social responsibility, and they're viewing it with me. And there's one fledgling school in a very low income area in Brooklyn. And we've worked with a community college and this high school. We give them some tips on the curriculum and we offer mentors electronically. And we give these kids internships. And we say in parallel, they do what they call dual enroll, which can happen in many schools around the world where you're getting your high school degree and a community college associate degree at the same time. And some states and countries will even do it for free. And we said, and if we have an opening, you can have a chance in the line here for the job, but no promise. I walk in and we start hiring some of these kids. And honestly, I'm like, this is not csr. I feel like I have stumbled upon a new pool of talent. And by the way, 90% were black because these were all in these particular neighborhoods we had started in. And it would take me down a path. They were called Pathway to Technology early college High School. So they were around technology. They were a school in a current high school, way better performance, 400x the graduation rate. Then, of course, I have a company of all engineers who say, well, are you dumbing down the company? Because we're bringing in people that don't have college and PhDs. We do a lot of data gathering, a lot of data gathering over the years, and we find, you know what, after about a year, same performance as our college grads, oh, look at this. They're taking more courses because they're thirsty. They want to keep learning, more loyal, more retentive. Eventually, it takes me down a decade of work that we would re look at every job credential and we would find that 50% of our jobs did not need to start, particularly in tech with a college degree. I didn't say you have to have one to maybe finish, but not to start. And I say to myself, wow, this is a pool. And I said, this is not csr. This is a talent strategy. And then it would merge with when I have got a company, as the industry's accelerated and actually 2 of 10 people have skills for the future, I got to move everybody up with their skills. And. And I start to say to myself, this isn't just about a diverse pool. Wouldn't it be great if everyone got promoted for their skills and paid for their skills in a skills first world? It's a culture. It is a culture. And technology is changing so fast, hey, you might need a new skill every three to five years. So I would then, as we're feverishly trying to catch up on things like cloud, I'm hiring external people. I Start to watch this other thing I learn the people I hire, experts from outside, some do great, but some they like break mission critical apps we work on. And I say what's the difference? And I watch current IBM people who some they learn all these new things. I say there's only one common denominator between these two groups of people. The ones that succeed are the ones willing to learn something and who don't just say no, no, I know how to do something, I don't need to learn too much more. So it took me down this path of what started again. I realize access and aptitude don't go together. Then I start to say, whoa, I got new pools of talent in a talent war that's out there. Then I say, whoa, we're entering a world where now I've got mid career people, technology starting to leave people behind. So now there's mid career, longer term people that all need new jobs. Everybody's going to have to have this learning. And then I say, well I better change how I hire for propensity to learn even. In fact to me this is the number one reason I'd hire someone is their willingness to learn. It is the number one reason. So when you say what got you there? I mean I add those things up together and back to college degrees. I do circle back. I did listen to your question, back to your original question. Here's a fact and I didn't realize all developed countries, 60, 65% of people do not have a university degree in America. Then happens George Floyd, circa 80% of between like 24 and 35 Black Americans do not have a college degree. All right, this is not mathematically solvable because I happen to believe economic opportunity is the best way to equalize. I think you do too. By the way, from what I read, giving people the ability to have a way forward, feed a family of four, have a good life. So I come to believe it's not required. And again, I am vice chairman at Northwestern University, one of the most esteemed universities in this country. So it isn't that I do not agree, as a colleague from MIT said, it's just a myth that it should be college for everyone. Right? But everyone could eventually have the chance. But boy, if we try to wait till that's the only answer, you know, we'll have a very fractured country. And this is not true just in America, around the world. Right? Because when people don't see a better future, they do things like riot and other things around here. And so I felt very strongly you can tell. I feel I'm almost like giving a sermon here. I feel very strongly about a skills first is a culture. And that's why the firm with a group of my colleagues in response to George Floyd at the time, Ken Frazier who ran Merck said something I think profound. He said look, we should do what businesses do best. We gotta create employment. And I was the how to that vision. Meaning wait, skills first doesn't mean hire people with no skill. We gotta get people these skills but they can get some good skills for these kinds of jobs. And I gotta get all these companies who now many have joined and have done great work to re credential their jobs. Meaning go back and take a hard look if you wrote a skill and not a degree because it became a really simple way to ferret out resumes when it means no no no hr your job is to build people skills, not buy them. And so it just changes so much. And therefore long answer to your question is that I really believe that it is a good thing particularly in a time of transition with technology in the world right now to move to a skills first world. And it does not mean that people should not get college degrees. That is absolutely still on the menu. But it doesn't have to be the only pathway. There are other pathways. And by the way my other experience was so many of the kids that they were kids coming through the pathway to technology early college high schools. There are 300 in the world now 150,000 pipeline of people coming through many who went on to get their college degrees. Because I'm like wait, I want to hire them. They're like no, they went to a four year university. So I'm like that wouldn't have even been on their menu before. And so it's been a little bit of both. But it's the reason so much could be fixed back to good power is to do and celebrate progress, not perfection. Perfection would be wait for everybody to get a copy degree. No, no, no. We could do so much together by not waiting and we'd make a heck of a lot of progress for the country.

Up next on Remarkable People like I.

Believe companies have the right and have the responsibility to prepare society for their future. They create. I believe in inclusion is a choice you make every day. I also believe that the root of this is people have to trust you and that will happen. Values based decisions by your actions instead of your words. A million tango.

Want to know when there's a new episode of remarkable people? Simply text 831-609-0628 if you live in the US or Canada, don't miss upcoming shows. Take a moment to follow remarkable people in your app or podcast player. You're listening to remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki. Would you say that the goal of the Skills first philosophy is not that Tony can go from the cafeteria to become an engineer and then be able to enable his children to go to college if his children don't go to college either? That's neither here nor there.

I would say that the goal of Skills for is to everyone to realize they have to have a market competitive skill and that college is not the only pathway to it. That would be the goal because by the way, there are great trades jobs. You can absolutely have a very good career for a family and a trades job that is out there. Our country at the heel of the GI Bill and things like that. If I speak just America, you have listeners from everywhere. But in America it became a college or bust. Right? And your family immigrated over. College would be perhaps the answer here. And if you didn't go to college, that's a mistake. Yet you go to other countries, as I think you well know, Switzerland, Germany. There is quite a focus on vocational schools as well. Germany, as I recall, has 19x apprenticeships versus America. Crazy. I mean apprenticeships are probably our most untapped pathway out there that could make so many people convert from one career to another, earn while they learn. Because once you're mid career you have obligations. It is very hard to stand still and say, oh let me just go back to school full time. You need earn and learn. And even Canada 11x the US in apprenticeships. So there are ways. So that's my message is about pathways, that there are multiple pathways on ramps so that where you start does not have to determine where you end up.

I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to let you explain it first. So what is the 110 I had.

Already prepared my successor had already announced my retirement and I had worked on Skills first as an initiative for quite some time at this point. Again, it started first as an IBM thing, then a broader business community thing, then around the world. The notion in fact originally I called it new collar jobs, meaning not white collar, not blue collar. I was trying to take away a stigma. These were a set of jobs that could be done that were new, mostly in technology kind of jobs that had a positive note to them. And so I'd already announced I was going to be retiring. I was executive chairman helping with a lot of things. And in that Period, as I mentioned, is when the death of George Floyd, the mother of George Floyd, and businesses were all in an uproar of what to do. And as I said, our friend Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault, two of the most senior happen to be good friends of mine, black leaders in the country said, wait, wait, do, let's do what business can do and hire. It was like a light bulb went on. These are my friends that I'm thinking good vision skills first is the only way this is going to work. If we can now get all of our colleagues and companies to move to re credential jobs, move the skills first, start to pivot their whole culture that way, and we could go work with all of what I would call talent developers to pull in. Whether it's community colleges, that's a longer story. There's many fragmented, fractured, well intended but not yet successful talent developers out there that are not for your college degrees. And I said, whoa, this is our way to do it. So we decided to form an organization called 110, which stands for One Million Black Talent into upwardly mobile middle class jobs in the next decade. So cumulative. And why did we start with black? Obviously that in the moment was one of the biggest issues we could help address. And as any startup, you would start with one group. And this has been a question that many people say, wait, what about Hispanic? And what about this group? That group? Actually we're trying to work on the systemic barriers that will help everybody, even not just an underrepresented group. Because if a job's over credentialed, that applies. Like I said, 60% of Americans don't have a college degree. Then we would say in a company, can you promote people based on their skills? Not just did they have these qualifying degrees. I think one of the best success stories of this is Delta and Ed Bastian removed the college degree for pilots, lo and behold, gets a whole flood in of diverse pilot applications. You can learn. It's not like you want a pilot who doesn't know what he's doing. You could have gotten those skills in many different routes. Not always a college degree. If it's why up until this point, the vast majority of pilots are obviously white and male. We start talking to all our colleagues and we say, look, it's a hard thing to change your culture of how you hire people and just all of the hidden biases that come in the interview. Even if you remove the credential, I'm telling you, you'll still hire high college degree people. If I don't do more. Because even in an interview you say tell me what you did when this happened. And the person's oh, I've never been in that situation. You gotta change it to hypothetical. I mean there's many things that have to change. So we said let's form this company, it's a non for profit and let's get. Right now I think we're close to a hundred companies and let's get them all on this journey. And they all, God bless them, you know, we said this is going to be hard, you guys got to stick with it, you can't back away. They put in money, they've made commitments of how many people to hire every year and we have to work both sides. I say it's like a supply and demand problem. We're going to work on the demand side, get that to be non credentialed for the right jobs. And today to prove my point, these are the best companies in America. And guess what? Family of four family sustaining jobs varies by region but let's say on average 60, $70,000 a year jobs. You're going to not believe it. Maybe almost 80% of those jobs require a college degree in this country in those companies. And we're speaking to them big employers that has crept up for no really great reason. You go back and look not required. Our guess is it could be in half that number. Now we got to work through the process in these companies. Trust me, it is not easy. Then the other side we're working on is the supply side which is there are a million non for profits that want to do good but they can create 35 people with cloud skills. Companies can't deal with hundreds of these things and do hiring from them and know if they're any good. So we are working on trying to scale the ones that are the best. Make investments, get community. Some community colleges do a great job, others don't as an example. And so we're working on that side of it. That would be the supply side. And we just now are entering year three and I think last year we finished up our hires last year were circa about 75,000 I think. And so keep moving up and like you say there's still a lot to do but celebrate. That's a step forward of progress and it's why I'm so firm on this. For any company as a way to do in this day and age, it is your talent strategy. It is not a diversity strategy, it is a talent strategy. So that's what OneTen is. We started with that group. But we are removing barriers for everybody and we're going to keep expanding.

I saw the list of the OneTen partners and to my utter amazement, Apple, Google, Facebook, ebay, those companies aren't in there.

No, no, don't run with them. I think some of them felt they're of scale. They had their own programs and were doing their own things. Google has a program it's doing, but we are also working to get them to join us too. It's been an interesting exercise because competitors have to work together on it. You're doing something like each of us that have like a company called Aon Insurance. They've done a lot of work on apprenticeships. IBM did a ton of work on the idea of skills re credentialing. And so we wrote up a guidebook and the credentials for it and we share it with everyone, including our competitors. So you have to take a leap of faith that all boats do rise out of this. So now Airbnb joined us, if I recall. I think they're on our list. So we have a few of our newer colleagues that are joining and I would hope you would will see more on our list. Our hands are full right now. But it isn't that I don't think they believe. I think some feel that, hey, I'm of scale, I've got my programs. But we were trying to convince people, hey, maybe you know what you're doing, perhaps you could teach someone else then. So we're not all in there to just take. We're giving too. There's a lot of members who actually do pretty well and they're helping other members right now, is how I would say it.

This is the part where your PR person is going to jump out and come back on and say, no, Ginny, don't answer that question.

Okay.

First of all, it's ironic that you're in Florida, but it seems to me that the 110 program, because of its focus, and I have to give you another caveat that I think being quote unquote, woke is a positive thing, not a negative thing. But I could make the case that the 1 dan program is about as woke as you could possibly get get. And Desantis head's gonna explode when he hears about this.

I understand your question. And in fact, I spoke at a big event here with 500 people last week. And I'm cognizant. However, the barriers that we're addressing apply to everybody. You know, and sometimes it's a shame if people want to focus on just One aspect of something, right? And if I said to you you had a startup company and said you should focus on one market segment first, you would think that's common sense. Trust me, when I've tried to focus on more than one, I failed. So we picked a thing to focus on. But those things we're working on really do apply to everyone. That's. Yes, you could describe it that way, but I also believe, I don't even think in those terms. We are about getting more people, better jobs in the end, better jobs for lots more people in this country. And there are 60% that could have better jobs. That is a lot of people. And so I rest my case on that. And I'm convinced that it works because I've actually seen the real thing. And I've watched so many families change. When dignity of work and that ability to then see the future and what that means for their children, you know, so what you said a second ago, oh, no, their children will have higher aspirations. It will be. And the dignity of work is a really big thing. And that is what we are offering. And that applies to everyone.

Someone who has run IBM, I would really be interested in your perspective. The topic is ChatGPT. You know, you had Watson. Why could Watson become ChatGPT? Could ChatGPT become Watson? What do you foresee? Teachers are going crazy, students are answering with ChatGPT. You know, actually, in preparation for this interview, I went to ChatGPT and I said, what should I ask Ginny Rometti for a podcast interview? And it gave me 15 questions, one of which I used, but still. And that was in 30 seconds. So what's your take on ChatGPT?

I want to back up a second on. And you started with the book. And look, I wrote a book. Not because I'd always said, oh my, I must write a book. I felt so strongly about the things could be done in this world where you deal with tension, you do it with respect, you make progress, and you do hard things in a positive way. So in retrospect, these principles. And I will come back now to Chat GPT. I said, what did I learn from all these situations I had been in? And could I codify it into something? Again, not in the moment did I know it. It's now as I look back and am forced to inspect my life and inspect what I did come up with these five principles. Which one is it makes a difference if you are be in service of someone or something. That's very different than serving them. Second is your ability to build belief which means you can convince people to voluntarily embrace an alternate reality. Not order them, not do it for fear that it is so important to do something hard. That this is about voluntarily believing in a future. I'm going to come to your chat in a second. The third big thing I learned is yes, know what to change but think hard about what must endure. And that's about making a lot of tough choices. Because in the end, and I say this really strongly, how you do things may be more important than what you actually do. And this will now come to that point. And oddly enough, my fourth principle was steward good tech. And the fifth is be resilient. We talked a lot about resilience. But steward good tech, what does that mean? And I was trying to make them memorable to people. And I said be in service of is the soul, build belief would be the heart. Knowing what to change and what should endure would be the brain. The kind of left side or right side. Good tech is the muscle and resilience is a spirit. Why is it a muscle? Have the strength to take responsibility for the long term. It's upside and it's downside. And we talked a lot about the social side of that. Like I believe companies have the right and have the responsibility to prepare society for their future. They create. I believe in inclusion is a choice you make every day. I also believe at the root of this is people have to trust you and that will happen. Values based decisions by your actions instead of your words a million times over. Enter CHAT GPT so it's about these big language models. No problem. That is one great one. That demonstration got into the social conscience of everyone now. Right. So it's a lot of big discussion. And you're right, a lot of the discussion is about the impact on education and are we going to have a whole generation? They don't memorize anything. It goes in their phone. Now can they not Write either? Because ChatGPT will be doing their writing as an example. Look, I think AI in general being the company that I feel brought it out of its winter, its most recent winter back with Watson. But with it comes responsibility for its up and down. So what do I think? I think it's great. I think it will help do a lot of good things. But I also think we got to think about in parallel. Right? Okay. What are the downsides of it and what do you do? And so what I think about it now is we're getting a glimpse of what could be the downsides in this world. It happens very quickly. People often use the analogy, that form of AI is not good or bad in and of itself. AI is just a reflection of humanity. And so it's a matter now what we do with it. So I do think it calls into question. And when I say steward, good tech is all right, what are the guardrails do you want to put around something like that? We do a lot of work on quantum computing. I spent. I have. Honestly, Guy, I've been talking about AI ethics for a decade. I'm like, why does no one want to listen? A decade ago, AI is not bad inherently, but it's the uses of technology. And I spent a lot of time with lawmakers on, you can't regulate the technology. You got to regulate the use of the technology. Because just like a weapon, a weapon can defend, a weapon can hurt. People will say, the difference with that analogy is the weapon doesn't think for itself. And maybe AI is thinking for itself in some cases. But my long answer, what do I think of it? Is I think it's is great. I think in the positive, it could help people do their jobs better that are out there, use the proper way. I think it can really give a jolt to the education world to reinvent things that are desperately in need of reinvention. But then I also think those should be guardrails, particularly about how do we learn. And even, like you said, you got back answers that were not all right, because it is a garbage in, garbage out method. Meaning if I look at my own Wikipedia, there's a lot of things wrong on there and I just don't care to fix it. But I can tell. Many people I've tried to convince, I did not go to General Motors Institute. I did not go there. I went to Northwestern. But somehow that's out there and somebody thinks I've gone there and I couldn't convince a guy I didn't go there. So I believe it's an example, a perfect example of the moment that will now root for people. What does it mean to have principles of trust and transparency around technology and that we know what it's capable of and you don't want to harness it too soon because you want it to develop and you don't want to crimp it. On the other hand, what's the limit? So I can understand why some professors now are like, you can't use it in this. And I'm going to change the way I do testing and this and that. That's probably good, by the way. And I think we're like just the infancy of that, but those technologies will just get better. So it's a matter of how we're going to choose and then what kind of guardrails we want to put around them. But I think a lot of companies, and you don't have to be a tech company for this, should think about. And that's why I made it one of these five principles. I don't care if you're the user, the builder of it, the maker, just an individual, any company, you got to steward good tech because people are going to judge you by how you use this technology. And I've watched people with AI love it or hate it, depending on how it's introduced to them and what it does and who taught it. I hope what this does is catalyze a moment that we will internalize what it means to have things like AI ethics in guardrails around these technologies that they should augment man, not hurt man. And so this will be a journey. And there are people already like you saw, there's some young folks that I don't know if he's young or not, but some people working on how to tell if the paper was written with ChatGPT. Right. And to me, like a visceral example with IBM was we have in our, in my view, the leader of quantum computing. But way back we knew quantum could unlock most encryption and so if not all traditional encryption, in parallel we have been building quantum proof encryption. That to me is your duty when you do something like that. And honestly, I believe companies, when it came to social media, thinking through if I have downside, got it. I'm benefiting from the upside. I gotta think through the downsides. This is what I think will crystallize for firms out of this simple thing that's captured people's imaginations is whoa, you got to take responsibility for both sides. And I'm hoping that's now what comes out of this.

I think ChatGPT and the general concept of AI as it's now evangelizing is profound. As profound as personal computing, the Internet and social media.

It will be referred to as an era of technology. It will be. And with every one of them comes all these issues as in the past. Look, I'm not trying to make it academic. When we went to electrification, when people came off a farm, all these like real big arcs with them have had big social change that came with them. And so we're going to participate in that and hopefully we can help out some of the bad part of that. At the same time, I'm old Enough.

To remember the transition from slide rules to HP35s, right?

Yeah, me too.

That was cheating using an HP calculator.

Right. I remember having to put mine on the side of the room. The teacher was like, no, no, put those over there. Right.

I mean if you think about it, let's say that people object to the fact that ChatGPT is used to write a speech. So you didn't write your speech. But let's face it, most people, or at least most people at the executive level, they're not writing their speeches anyway. Somebody else, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, they had five speechwriters. So it's not like they were crafting it with a fountain pen. So what's the difference? But anyway, I digress.

No, I think that's actually a good analogy. And it's just, it's just okay, at what point does this matter and not matter? And you know, for what I think the biggest thing is going to be for how we learn and what we accept to be true. And so that's where we'll need some of that, that guardrail. So. So thank you for letting me recap those five principles of. Because honestly the only reason I wrote a.

Well, we want people to buy your book, that's for sure.

Well, it is a memoir with purpose. It is not everything about life and me and anything but it obviously did try to like follow my own medicine and write it to be in service of. So honestly try it. I mean you'll be the judge. You read it now. Of trying to share some ideas.

Okay, Okay. I promise you this truly is the last question. Okay. So in short, I consider you remarkable. Let's not argue that. Lets just assume that I'm right. You are remarkable. Can you summarize how you became remarkable?

I asked more questions than I gave answers.

Let me be honest, anybody who was the CEO of IBM probably by definition is remarkable. But Ginny is remarkable on top of remarkable. I loved her discussion of skill based job requirements. I'm 100% behind that idea. All hail Ginny Rometti. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. I hail Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff C. Shannon Hernandez, Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura and the drop in Queen of Santa Cruz, California, Madison Nismer. Until next time, mahalo and aloha. Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world. They provide practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable if you live in the US or Canada. Text 831-609-0628 to get notified of each new episode. This is remarkable, people.