Louis Gerstner, chairman of The Carlyle Group and former CEO of IBM

I went to see Louis Gerstner, chairman of The Carlyle Group and former CEO of IBM, speak as part of the Dean’s Innovative Leader Series at MIT Sloan.

Lou is one of the most respected business leaders in America. He is former CEO of Nabisco, former CEO of American Express, director at McKinsey and Company (where he spent 11 years after joining in 1965), and HBS graduate. He was chairman of the board of IBM from 1993 until his retirement in 2002 and is credited for transforming the culture at IBM and the historic turnaround that saved the company from ruin in the 1990's. Now he is Chairman of The Carlyle Group, the largest private equity fund in the world (see ranking).

He talked about good practices in business leadership:

• Smile in the elevators. How you look, how you behave and how you related is very important in leadership
• If you make an unpopular decision (e.g., layoffs), you have to spend a lot of time explaining people why you are making it. Take responsabilities, sign memos, explain decisions, etc. You should not make an unpopular decision by making rational decisions closed in your office
• If you have executives that are outperformers but not committed with your values, ideas and culture, then you should let them go
• Seek good advice and give good advice regularly

He is an excellent speaker and he was quite funny too. He talked about his first job after McKinsey in this way: "when I got my FIRST REAL JOB, I was thrilled to be the guy making the final decisions instead of bringing flip charts".