Former CEO of IBM's post-retirement life

[Dulcimina]

He's not particularly frugal, he didn't retire particularly early, and he still works 40 hours/week, but there is something I can't put my finger on that seems moustachian!

By retiring at 61, did you peak too early?

No. Because you are implicitly defining the CEO job as the peak. And the topography of my life is much flatter than that.

A lot of people would look at me and say, “Oh, he’s the old chairman of IBM. You know, he’s a has-been. Or he’s gone.”

I’m doing things that are really important to me that I’m having fun doing.

What form did the planning take?

It’s sort of like you got a mainstream thing that you’re doing, but you’re bringing these other things alongside. IBM, CEO of a huge company. You get off that train. You’ve got to invest some of yourself in preparation for retirement and in carrying it out when you finish.

This has got to be in place before you retire. It’s not mechanical. You can’t just retire and say, “Okay, I’ll go on some boards” or “I’ll go do something else.” That’s empty. You’ve got to care about certain needs, whether that’s education, your university.

You go become the chairman of the board of the university. Or you care about a hospital and become chairman.

If you basically are a person that is driven almost entirely by power or wealth, you’re not going to have a post-CEO life. You’re going to stay as a CEO. You’re going to go out with your boots on.

So your advice is?

That you need to think about this early in your career: “About 10 years from now, what do I want to spend my time on?”

Did you seek advice yourself before you retired about what to do in retirement?

[Long pause.]

I spent a very important 11 years at McKinsey. I got to see a lot of CEOs. I’ve seen others since then. I have watched how many of them have failed retirement.

My wife would say I’ve failed retirement because I’m still working so hard. I don’t think I’ve retired. I don’t use that word.

Why do CEOs fail at it?

They don’t plan for it. It’s hard to plan for it. You’re working very hard as a CEO and all of a sudden you hit the stop mark (claps his hand), and it’s over.

If the answer is, “I want to stay in my job until I’m 90,” which is what some CEOs want, that’s fine. If you’re thinking that you want to stop and change and do something else, you’ve got to work at it early on. Otherwise, you’re going to spend your life trying to get your golf game better. It’s a game that doesn’t get better with age, and you’re going to wind up looking at the world through the bottom of a glass.

It’s really sad to see very talented people retire. They don’t have anything to do

Did you have other job offers after you left IBM?

I was never offered the job, but I was asked if I would consider two very significant turnaround situations. My answer was ‘no.’

What do you miss most about being a CEO?

I don’t miss a lot.

LOL

How do you allocate your time?

The first thing I do is I block out every Tuesday morning, because every Tuesday morning I go fishing. So, if Carlyle calls a meeting on Tuesday mornings, I’m not on the call.

But the cadence is slower now?

When you leave a high-pressure job like CEO of IBM, and you go and do other things, it’s like you’re driving 80 miles an hour on the highway, and you get off the exit at 35. You feel like you’re stopped.

The same is true in a career. I used to work 70 hours a week. I probably now work 40.  I have time to see my grandchildren. I have time to travel. I took a trip around the world last year. We went to Jordan, Syria, the Maldives, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam. This year we took a trip to Zimbabwe and Botswana. I’m planning a trip to Bhutan.

But you are keeping it at 35 hours, right?

Well, the Broad thing is adding more time. That’s fine. It’s extraordinary.

I don’t look back. I look forward. What am I going to do next?

I enjoy the travel, the incredible amount of reading I’m doing, the time I spend with my family, working in the garden. What I have to do now is to make sure this creep doesn’t continue to grow.

http://js.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/louis-v-gerstner-jr-lays-out-his-post-ibm-life/2013/06/07/04e9da2a-cd42-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story_2.html

[Joet]

He's obviously set for life in at least a 25x mustachian spending level-- seems like a cool dude.

The energy/drive/focus/passion is something we can also pay heed to. As is often the case mentioned but poorly understood or interpreted: If you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life.

Of course, this guy may have some kind of deep-rooted/protestant/work ethic going on and simply can't force himself to 'stop', clearly he has 'enough'.

I see mini handcuffs on the guy but perhaps I'm wrong. He may never 'stop' until his 70s, why, probably because with important positions (chairman, boards, councils, etc) comes great respect and privilege. I believe that is intoxicating. Nobody is holding a gun to his head. Walking your dog sounds great and all but to a person with power, it is much better I suppose to have an entire company or industry hanging on your every word.

[Dulcimina]

The energy/drive/focus/passion is something we can also pay heed to. As is often the case mentioned but poorly understood or interpreted: If you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life.

Of course, this guy may have some kind of deep-rooted/protestant/work ethic going on and simply can't force himself to 'stop', clearly he has 'enough'.

I see mini handcuffs on the guy but perhaps I'm wrong. He may never 'stop' until his 70s, why, probably because with important positions (chairman, boards, councils, etc) comes great respect and privilege. I believe that is intoxicating. Nobody is holding a gun to his head.

I agree, but this is what's mustachian to me.  People state that MMM isn't retired because of contractor work or the website. His argument is that he enjoys it.  This guy says the same thing.