Swerve

The only difference between a obstacle in your path and a stepping stone, is how high you lift your leg. So, when I wrote the book, I have a whole section called Swerve. It's called Swerve because there’s going to be those boulders and walls and all kinds of things, feelings, you know, name it, they're all going to show up. That's okay. You just swerve, you figure out a different way to get around it, under it, over it, through it. Now, have somebody help you break it, who knows? But there are multiple ways to approach things. So don't let things that get in your way stop you, just reassess and come up with another approach. I'll give you an example. When I joined IBM, right out of school and I said I wanted to be a CEO, my goal was to be CEO of IBM. Well, that wasn't in my resume. I’m CEO of IBM. So, you can sit there and say, okay, so was that your wall? And what happened is I got to the point where I was like, okay, I can see it. Meaning my boss worked for the CEO, Lou Gerstner, right. There's no one who looks like me higher in the company. I'm running a multibillion -- I mean, I've done well. But I didn't have the view and the feedback and the feeling that I was really going to have the opportunity to truly compete for that CEO role. And so I swerved, my goal was not to be CEO of IBM. My goal is to be a CEO. I picked IBM when I joined it. So, I just came up with -- I tell people, keep the goal. There's multiple ways to achieve a goal, keep the goal, but just come up with a modified plan. So I modified my plan.