Good Power

7

Building Belief

It’s July 2002, and two secret meetings are taking place in two conference rooms at a Marriott Hotel in New York City. In one room, partners from the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) are preparing to spin off the firm’s thirty-thousand-person consulting unit with an IPO. Most people involved in the planning have no clue that on another floor, my colleagues from IBM are negotiating to buy PwC’s consulting unit, which will cancel the public offering.

I am running one of the company’s largest units, IBM Global Services Americas, which includes all IT consulting and outsourcing. I think the potential acquisition has exciting implications for IBM’s future. Our own IT consulting business has grown, but we’re missing opportunities ...