Word: palmisano
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Samuel J. Palmisano...
Walton had asked Akers to give a speech at a university near Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., and he invited both Akers and his young assistant to come by the next day to sit in on a staff meeting. That morning Palmisano was shocked to see Walton, one of the richest men in America, pull up to the hotel in his battered pickup truck and drive the two IBM suits over to his company's bare-bones headquarters. As Walton's top lieutenants spoke, the chairman took copious notes. Then, after about 90 minutes, Walton abruptly excused himself...
...Palmisano climbed the ladder at IBM, he became known as a penny-pinching tactician who loves to court developers or customers but doesn't have much patience for sales-award cruises or team-building retreats. Palmisano "doesn't talk down to anybody, and he doesn't put on airs," says technology consultant Sam Albert, a former executive at IBM. Palmisano doesn't travel with an entourage, nor does he have an executive assistant or personal spokesman. On at least one occasion, he arrived at a meeting and lit into underlings for spending money on an elaborate floral centerpiece. They...
Raised in Baltimore, the son of an auto body-shop owner, Palmisano grew up in a big, solidly middle-class, Catholic family, learning the ways of the world at an early age from his grade-school classmates, some of whose fathers in the rough, corruption-rife port city were being indicted for various crimes...
...offensive lineman on his high school football team, Palmisano displayed a knack for preparation, devouring the scouting reports before games and almost never blowing a blocking assignment, according to assistant coach Augie Miceli. (Palmisano went on to play for Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a degree in history.) Off the field, he also showed an early entrepreneurial streak, once earning $1,000 as a fill-in saxophonist when the Temptations were in town...