Frank T. Cary

Over the course of more than 30 years at IBM, Frank T. Cary came to be known as an unflappable leader, a demanding but deliberate boss, and an objective thinker. He rose from his post as a sales representative in Southern California all the way to CEO. Along the way, Cary exhibited a levelheaded approach to management and a determined work ethic, whether he was devising new strategies to compete in global markets, shepherding the personal computer into the marketplace, opposing crippling lawsuits, or confronting a personal fear of public speaking.

Born the son of a doctor in Gooding, Idaho, Cary moved with his family as a young boy to Inglewood, California. At the University of California, Los Angeles, he majored in political science with aspirations of becoming a lawyer. Instead, near the end of World War II, Cary joined the US Army and decamped to Japan as a lieutenant. After returning home at age 27, he decided against law school. Supported by the GI bill and his wife’s schoolteacher salary, he enrolled in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, skipping holidays and school breaks to hasten the path to a degree.

Cary had succeeded T. Vincent Learson, who held the CEO role for less than two years. The company Cary inherited was in the midst of a historic ascent. By the late 1960s, IBM had tripled revenue to USD 7 billion and more than doubled worldwide employee count to 242,000. But it was also a company in transition.

It fell to Cary to define what the company would, or could, become in a post-Watson era. The new CEO doubled down on the principles he believed best defined the company: “respect for the individual, the best in customer service, and the pursuit of excellence in every task we take on.” Meanwhile, heightened competition in the marketplace led Cary to distinguish IBM by directing new investments into product development and marketing. “I had confidence that we could meet all those new kinds of competition,” Cary reflected in an interview in the last issue of THINK, the company magazine first released in 1935, “but I had a lot less confidence on that score in the early ’70s than I do now.”

Partway through Cary’s tenure as CEO, many top American companies came under pressure for doing business with the South African government. IBM was no exception. At first, Cary remained wary of risking the company’s business in the country. “Racial discrimination of any type is contrary to the policies of IBM,” he declared at IBM’s annual meeting in 1973. “While our presence in some ways does support the government of South Africa, we believe we should not leave, that we are a force for good there, and that we would fail our employees and our stockholders if we left.”

But he soon took a stronger stance, joining General Motors chief executive Tom Murphy and GM board member Rev. Leon Sullivan in hosting a historic gathering of America’s leading corporate figures to strategize how to leverage their collective economic might against the continued apartheid. Eventually, in 1977, this resulted in the establishment of the original Sullivan Principles: demanding fair pay as well as equitable working conditions and hiring standards for non-white employees in South African businesses, both in and out of the workplace. When the South African government ignored these demands, IBM took this as the final straw and left the country. It was only when apartheid had ended did the company buy back the South African subsidiary that it had sold.

Just before Cary’s retirement, he made a critical decision. The time had come to catapult IBM into the PC era. He recruited Bill Lowe, of the company’s Boca Raton facilities in Florida, to set up an elite task force to develop an IBM personal computer as quickly as possible. Working around the clock, Lowe and his team launched the company’s first PC in little more than a year. In January of 1981, Cary stepped down from his role as CEO, at age 60, as per company tradition, and from his position as chairman in 1983. 

Cary died at the age of 85 in 2006. He was remembered by his employees and fellow executives as a thoughtful listener with a sense of humor who could bring peace to tense meetings and boardroom disagreements. Under his leadership, IBM boomed, with revenue jumping from USD 9.5 billion to USD 40.2 billion and employee numbers skyrocketing from around 260,000 to nearly 370,000. “More than any other IBM CEO,” the historian James Cortada wrote, “Frank T. Cary turned IBM into a global behemoth.”

With objectivity and his trademark resolve, Cary led the company through some of its most trying yet gainful years, expressing pride throughout in the work of IBM’s many loyal employees. “I’ve had the time of my life,” he said.