Good Power
Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World
Book Edition Details
Summary
From the gritty resilience of a challenging childhood to the commanding helm of IBM, Ginni Rometty's narrative in "Good Power" is a clarion call for transformative leadership. This isn't just a memoir; it's a manifesto for wielding influence with integrity. Rometty artfully intertwines her personal journey with five compelling principles that redefine what it means to lead with purpose: serving others, fostering belief, discerning change, championing responsible technology, and embodying resilience. Her life lessons morph into a blueprint for harnessing power to foster meaningful, widespread impact—not just for the elite, but for everyone. Through the lens of her pioneering SkillsFirst initiative, she illuminates the path toward a more equitable future, urging us all to enact positive change on both personal and societal scales. With an invigorating blend of heart and strategic insight, Rometty's story invites readers to reimagine the very essence of leadership.
Introduction
In the autumn of 1973, a sixteen-year-old girl stood in the garage of her family's unfinished house, overhearing words that would forever change her understanding of power and responsibility. Her father, abandoning his family just before Thanksgiving, coldly told her desperate mother: "I'll never give you anything. For all I care, you can go work on the street." That moment of cruelty became a defining catalyst for Virginia "Ginni" Rometty, who would rise from those humble beginnings in suburban Chicago to become the first female CEO in IBM's century-long history, leading one of America's most iconic companies through its most challenging transformation. Rometty's journey from a struggling single-parent household to the pinnacle of corporate leadership offers profound insights into what she calls "good power" - the ability to create positive change through service, values, and genuine care for others. Her story illuminates how adversity can forge resilience, how authentic leadership emerges from putting others first, and how technology companies bear a special responsibility to prepare society for our digital future. Through her experiences navigating corporate hierarchies, steering massive organizational change, and championing educational reform, readers will discover how true power comes not from authority or position, but from the courage to serve something greater than oneself. Her advocacy for skills-based hiring and her work to create pathways for underserved communities reveals a leader who never forgot her roots or the transformative power of opportunity.
From Struggle to Strength: Early Life and Career Formation
The foundation of Rometty's character was laid in a family shaped by resilience and hard work. Her great-grandmother, Solemia Ushka, had fled war-torn Belarus and worked the night shift cleaning offices in Chicago's Wrigley Building to support her family. Her grandmother Mary operated a lamp shop seven days a week after being widowed twice. These women became Rometty's earliest role models, demonstrating that dignity comes from doing whatever needs to be done, for as long as it takes, to care for those you love. When Rometty's father abandoned the family in 1973, her mother faced an impossible situation: no money, no education beyond high school, and four children depending on her. Rather than succumb to despair, her mother chose to rebuild. She enrolled in community college night classes to learn computer skills while working multiple jobs, often leaving Ginni to care for her younger siblings. This experience taught Rometty that circumstances don't define you - your response to them does. She watched her mother transform from a abandoned housewife into a confident professional, proving that education and determination could rewrite any story. At Northwestern University, Rometty discovered her passion for computer science and engineering, fields where she was often the only woman in the room. She learned that preparation was her shield against doubt - if she knew her material better than anyone else, gender became irrelevant. Through scholarships, student loans, and summer internships at General Motors, she pieced together her education, understanding viscerally that access to opportunity could unleash human potential. These early years instilled in her a core belief that would later drive her advocacy work: lack of access, not lack of aptitude, was the primary barrier keeping people from better lives. The lessons of her youth - that work provides dignity, that learning never stops, and that helping others succeed creates the conditions for your own success - would become the bedrock principles of her leadership philosophy. She entered IBM in 1981 not just as an employee, but as someone who understood that true power comes from lifting others up while climbing the ladder yourself.
Leading Transformation: The IBM Years and Business Evolution
Rometty's rise through IBM's ranks was marked by her willingness to take on the assignments others avoided and her ability to build belief in seemingly impossible transformations. Her first major test came when she volunteered to lead the integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting division - a $3.5 billion acquisition that many predicted would fail. The challenge wasn't just financial; it was human. How do you merge two radically different cultures, retain top talent, and create something better than either organization alone? Her approach revealed what would become her signature leadership style: treating the acquisition as a merger of equals rather than a takeover. She assembled transition teams from both companies, gave former competitors meaningful roles in the new organization, and spent months traveling the world to personally meet with partners who would vote on whether to join IBM. By showing respect for what PwC had built while painting a compelling vision of what they could become together, she transformed potential adversaries into enthusiastic allies. The success of this integration established her as someone who could navigate complex human dynamics while delivering business results. When Rometty became CEO in 2012, IBM faced an existential challenge. The company that had invented business computing was being outpaced by nimble competitors like Amazon and Google. Revenue was flat, traditional products were commoditizing, and the tech industry was shifting toward cloud computing and artificial intelligence - areas where IBM lagged behind. Rather than make incremental changes, she embarked on the most comprehensive transformation in IBM's history, divesting $9 billion in legacy businesses while investing heavily in AI, cloud computing, and quantum technologies. The transformation required not just changing what IBM made, but how it worked. She introduced design thinking and agile methodologies to make the century-old company move faster. She mandated 40 hours of annual education for every employee and personally taught monthly sessions to 350,000 people worldwide. Most controversially, she abandoned IBM's long-standing financial roadmap that promised predictable earnings growth, choosing instead to invest in the future even when it meant disappointing Wall Street. Her willingness to endure short-term criticism for long-term strength demonstrated the kind of courage required to lead truly transformational change.
Stewarding Technology for Society: Values-Driven Leadership
As CEO of one of the world's largest technology companies, Rometty recognized that her decisions rippled far beyond IBM's walls. The 2013 Edward Snowden revelations about government surveillance programs thrust the entire tech industry into a crisis of public trust. While IBM wasn't directly involved, Rometty understood that the future of technology depended on society's willingness to embrace it. She chose to be proactive rather than defensive, publishing detailed principles about data privacy and AI ethics when many companies preferred to stay quiet. Her approach to stewarding technology was grounded in three core beliefs: technology should augment humanity rather than replace it, data belongs to its creators rather than to tech companies, and AI systems must be transparent and explainable rather than mysterious black boxes. These weren't just marketing slogans but operational principles that guided product development and client relationships. When discriminatory legislation threatened LGBTQ employees in North Carolina and Texas, she didn't hesitate to speak out and threaten economic consequences, understanding that inclusion was both a moral imperative and a business necessity. Rometty's vision of "good tech" extended beyond IBM to encompass the industry's responsibility to prepare society for the digital age. She championed the creation of P-TECH, an innovative high school program that combined traditional education with practical technology training and guaranteed pathways to good-paying jobs. What began as a single school in Brooklyn expanded to over 300 schools in 28 countries, proving that public-private partnerships could address the skills gap at scale. Her advocacy work reflected a fundamental belief that business leaders have a responsibility to use their platforms for societal benefit. She served on presidential advisory councils across party lines, testified before Congress about workforce development, and used her speaking engagements to argue for "precision regulation" that would address technology's risks without stifling innovation. Through her leadership of the Business Roundtable, she helped articulate a new vision of corporate responsibility that balanced shareholder returns with broader stakeholder value, arguing that businesses must serve customers, employees, communities, and society alongside investors.
Building a Skills-First Movement: Creating Systemic Change
After retiring as CEO, Rometty channeled her energy into addressing what she saw as one of society's most pressing challenges: the growing divide between those who have access to good jobs and those who don't. She observed that millions of positions requiring technical skills remained unfilled while millions of capable people were excluded from consideration simply because they lacked four-year college degrees. This "degree inflation" had created artificial barriers that were particularly harmful to Black Americans, rural communities, and other underserved populations. Her solution was to champion what she called "SkillsFirst" hiring - evaluating candidates based on their abilities and potential rather than their credentials. At IBM, she had already begun removing degree requirements from job postings, finding that non-degreed hires often outperformed their college-educated peers in innovation and client service while staying with the company longer. But creating change at one company wasn't sufficient; the problem required systemic transformation across entire industries and regions. Working with fellow CEOs Ken Frazier of Merck and others, Rometty co-founded OneTen, a coalition of major corporations committed to hiring one million Black Americans without college degrees into family-sustaining jobs over ten years. The initiative represented a new model of collective corporate action, aggregating demand for skilled workers to incentivize educational providers to align their programs with market needs. Rather than each company creating its own training programs, OneTen helps coordinate efforts and shares best practices across industries. The movement's success depends on changing deeply ingrained cultural attitudes about education, work, and human potential. Rometty argues that apprenticeships, community college programs, and skills-based certifications can be just as valuable as traditional four-year degrees for many careers. She advocates for policy changes including expanded financial aid for short-term training programs, universal broadband access, and portable credentialing systems that would make skills transparent across employers. Her vision of a "SkillsFirst world" represents not just a hiring strategy, but a fundamental reimagining of how society develops and deploys human talent in the digital age.
Summary
Ginni Rometty's journey from an abandoned teenager in suburban Chicago to a global business leader illustrates that true power comes not from position or authority, but from the commitment to serve others and create positive change in the world. Her life demonstrates that adversity can become advantage when we choose resilience over victimhood, that authentic leadership emerges when we put others' success ahead of our own, and that the greatest transformations happen when we bridge divides rather than deepen them. From her early experiences watching strong women rebuild their lives through education and hard work to her later advocacy for skills-based hiring and inclusive technology, Rometty has consistently championed the idea that access to opportunity - not just talent - determines who gets ahead in society. Her concept of "good power" offers a blueprint for anyone seeking to lead change, whether in corporations, communities, or their own lives: start with service to others, build belief through inclusive collaboration, make tough choices guided by enduring values, use technology to augment human potential, and maintain resilient optimism even when progress seems slow. For leaders at any level, Rometty's story provides both inspiration and practical guidance for creating positive change in an era that desperately needs it.
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