Your old pal Deep Throat here again.
As I have promised multiple times, here is the skinny on Rometty’s PLANNED afterlife from IBM, and how it touched Watson Health, product decisions, and wait for it, the Trump family. Now before you get bent out of shape, this is a non-political post, it just so happens to include Trump and several members of his family.
So if you’re ready to read the whole sordid story, grab a strong drink, buckle up, and I’ll begin.
Our story starts in 2013. Rometty, is the newly installed CEO of IBM, and quickly fell into the trap that Carly Fiorina fell into. She wanted to be the change agent CEO. Rometty was IBM, therefore IBM was Rometty. To do this she needed to reinvent not only the workforce, which is well documented, but also the public perception of IBM as a modern, cutting edge company with cool products and cool partners. (Remember the sorry mess that was the Apple partnership?). And by doing this, she would be elevated to the top of the CEO tree. Queen among all the CEO’s out there.
Part of this “THE” IBM CEO mantra she had internalized, was to move out of products that supposedly delivered low margin, and low growth. I have no intention of covering this here, as this is well documented. Suffice to say, as we know in hindsight, this strategy under Rometty was an abject failure. But at the time, in the early twenty-teens it made a great story.
However, in order for this to really be successful, and for the halo effect to cover not only IBM but the CEO herself, she needed a corresponding halo product. Enter Watson Health. Sure it was unproven. Sure it would not move the top-line. But boy was it a great halo product. What better product line than Watson Health to raise IBM’s profile, prove that IBM was at the cutting edge of new LIFE SAVING technology, and of course show all this transpired on Rometty’s watch. Without her vision in other words, this would never have happened. The halo by default extended to her!
Of course, as we all know, it didn’t fu----g work. Now it’s one thing to have a software product that doesn’t work as advertised, you might have a royally pi---d off customer. He-l you might lose that customer. But it’s quite another to have a product that doesn’t work, and then find you could put lives at risk. But back in 2014 and into 2015, WH was still under development. So results were not yet fully known. This didn’t stop Rometty from talking it up, or the potential; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MYhalt7EU (From Charlie Rose. Remember, Rometty was IBM, therefore IBM was Rometty).
I should say that in theory, there is nothing wrong with any company doing this. Look at GM right now talking about their new electric truck, even though it won’t be on the market until 2023. And given that WH was not fully tested at this point, it’s possible another CEO would have done the same thing.
However by late 2015 it was clear WH was not going to, and perhaps never would work as advertised. But Rometty kept talking about Watson and Watson Health in particular. https://fortune.com/2015/09/17/ginni-rometty-ibm-secret-to-success/ (Again, IBM and Rometty are as one).
She understood at this point that WH was not going to do all she had promised, but it was a great fit for what she wanted HER life AFTER IBM to be. She couldn’t point to financial performance, so instead she would speak about the shiny bauble of WH:
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/26/ibm-ceo-watson-will-reach-a-billion-consumers-next-year.html
But as a physician friend pointed out a few years ago; data sets compiled for Anglo-Saxons in the US, don’t work for people in sub-Sahara Africa. In layman's terms, IOW for people like me, it’s a case of garbage in garbage out. But for Rometty, this didn’t matter. The image was needed. And WH was in the spotlight. She wanted WH to work so badly that if she kept talking about it, perhaps it actually would work. And the reason became even clearer when Trump won in 2016.
Trump represented a golden opportunity for Rometty. Firstly, and you can see this easily, wherever there was an opportunity for Rometty to sit with Trump, she did it. From Trumps Tech/Business Summits, bending his ear at other meetings, or going to White House dinners with hubby in tow, she was there. She also gave plenty of interviews as well to slam the point home. How great IBM is doing because of ME! One I do recommend you finding is her interview with the FT from 2015. This was, in her mind, to be a regular puff piece. However, we’re talking the FT here, so it wasn’t.
Back to Trump as president. This gave her access to Ivanka Trump and HER hubby. If you want to waste a few minutes of your life, watch IT and Rometty talking about cloud to that well known hard hitting investigative journalist from Fox Business, Maria Bartiromo. Its painful. Rometty also made sure that IT and her were on a few panels talking about the future of work. Again, another few minutes of your life gone forever. Rometty kept in regular contact with IT and JK from 2017 onward.
What was the reason for all this Trump family suckupness? Simple, there were three legs of Rometty’s stool for the reinvention of Rometty from a regular CEO of IBM, to the Queen CEO of IBM, and afterlife as revered goddess.
First leg of the stool; as I have touched on before, reinvent IBM. Make it cool, hip, young, set for the future, and of course HIGHLY profitable. The second is built around Watson Health, the life saving technology chaperoned by Rometty to save the world from the scourge of disease at a lower cost. Among several over-promised statements;
‘ “We will be able to address, diagnose and treat 80 percent of what causes 80 percent of the cancer in the world. If that’s not motivating, I don’t know what is,” Rometty told Cramer.’ (JUN 20 2017)
“And I'm especially proud that IBM chose to start with one of the toughest areas – healthcare. IBM's moonshot, is to have Watson help beat cancer. It is being taught by the very best doctors in the world, from Cleveland Clinic to the Memorial-Sloan Kettering and many others. “ Feb 2017
It’s worth noting that even Krishna has called this focus on WH, “dangerous.”
The final leg of this reinvention of Rometty, and possibly the most important, was a segue into a political life, under the umbrella of Trumpism, justified by the success of the first two legs. With the help of IT, the ultimate Trump whisperer, Rometty would parachute into an ambassadorship somewhere. Hopefully somewhere harmless, like Belgium. Ironically, I happen to think she might be quite good at this. She’s articulate, charming when she needs to be, and smart. The other possible outcome was a move into a kitchen cabinet position as a key advisor to Trump.
Unfortunately for Rometty, all this fell apart. Every one of her “Reinvent Rometty’s” stools legs collapsed. She left IBM in far worse financial shape than she found it. And while the average person could care less, those that follow this know what really happened. She would be open to attack should she be appointed to a real “business position” in a Trump Admin. If you have a moment, read what IBM’s own website say’s about her stewardship. https://www.ibm.com/about/ginni/ Clearly there’s no focus on financial success, (how could there be?). Instead the focus is how many companies IBM bought, diverse hiring, and of course Red Hat. I feel sorry for the person who was given the mission to write this bu-----t.
The second leg to collapse is WH itself. When US based physicians, who REALLY know what the fu-k they’re talking about, back away from WH, well, that's when you’re in trouble: https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/25/ibm-watson-recommended-unsafe-incorrect-treatments/ (This article is from 2018, but that didn’t stop Rometty talking up WH in 2019 to anyone who’d listen).
Finally, Trump didn’t win reelection. So all that time sucking up to IT and JK came to naught. Given how she has so identified herself with Trump, the idea of Biden appointing her anywhere, even Belgium, is low. Although another failed CEO, Meg Whitman, was appointed to Kenya by Biden, so stranger things have happened.
So there you have it. The sordid little tale of why Rometty was so desperate for WH to succeed. What she was looking for post-IBM career wise. And how she was hoping to be remembered as a former IBM CEO. Of course she does have her $200m, access to IBM’s jets, and a chateau, (thanks to the equally inept BoD), so don’t feel too sorry for her.
Until next time
DT
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