Former IBM chief executive officer and chairman Lou Gerstner.
CORPORATE AMERICA’S LAST TRUE TITAN FALLS: The architect who SAVED a dying IBM—and EXPOSED the fatal flaw that is now KILLING every major company today—has died at 83. Lou Gerstner’s shocking death marks the END of an era where leaders DARED to tell the brutal truth.
In a sterile, corporate email, current CEO Arvind Krishna delivered the news, but his hollow words GLOSS OVER the explosive reality. Gerstner didn’t just “reshape” IBM; he performed a MIRACLE on a corporate corpse, dragging it back from the brink of a humiliating breakup by SLAUGHTERING its sacred cows. His first act? SHUTTING DOWN a pointless internal presentation with a legendary command: “Let’s just talk.” This was a DECLARATION OF WAR on the navel-gazing, self-congratulatory bureaucracy that now defines the modern C-suite.
Gerstner’s core diagnosis was a BOMBSHELL: IBM had become a self-licking ice cream cone, “optimized around our own processes… rather than around client outcomes.” This is the SAME CANCER metastasizing in every tech giant and institution today—obsessed with internal politics, ESG scores, and hollow “innovation” while CONTEMPTUOUSLY IGNORING the people they serve.
His death isn’t just the loss of a CEO; it’s the FINAL NAIL in the coffin of customer-centric leadership. Today’s leaders are cowards, hiding behind algorithms, diversity quotas, and remote-work mandates while their companies rot from within. Gerstner proved profits came from serving customers, not placating activists or Wall Street. That truth died with him.
We are now ruled by the very inward-facing zombies he vowed to destroy. The man who saved IBM is gone, and the disease he identified has won.
Author: Kayitsi.com
