Zander: Motorola has to mean something
Published: 18 Dec 2003 11:35 GMT
Do you have an idea how long it might take to size up the company?
I read Lou Gerstner's book a little while ago and thought it was pretty good. Lou took a lot of heat from the analysts at first. They wanted to know what his 90-day plan was and what his vision was. Lou just concentrated first on execution and low-hanging fruit. His big idea -- don't break up the company -- came a while later. And that is what you do. You try to add value where you can quickly, and the big ideas come.
I don't know whether it is three months or six months. I do know I am not going to just sit around and listen to slide shows. I am going to be out talking to customers and partners. I am going to meet employees.
Chris Galvin said he was stepping down because of a difference of opinion between himself and the rest of management. He's said that he wanted to concentrate on voice, while others have talked about integrating data services into phones. Can you shed some more light on this difference?
I wish I could but I had one conversation with Chris for 20 minutes and did not discuss it with the board. Chris is a good guy, and he is going to help me learn the business.
What is the urgency to the turnaround? We're talking about a company that has lost more than $6bn and shed 50,000 employees.
Unlike most companies in telco today, they have a strong balance sheet. They have been cash flow positive for the past 15 quarters. They are growing revenue. This is not a company where I have to face liquidity issues. We do, though, have to do a better job and have a sense of urgency.
"Urgency" is kind of an interesting word because Motorola's had a reputation for years as a slow-moving company. One of the rules of the semiconductor industry is that the upturn is over when Motorola announces it is building a fab (chip-fabrication plant). They were No. 1 in cell phones, and Nokia took over. Is that the reputation that's out there?
You know, you make mistakes. We all do. Look at Dell 10 or 12 years ago. (Motorola's) government business is going well. The automotive business is going great. The cell phone thing, sure, they probably didn't see digital as quick as they perhaps should have.
I'm going to side with you. The camera phone should have been out a few months ago, and those are all market-share points. You've got to be maniacal about execution, but they have got a franchise, and the nice thing about the handset business is that the market share jumps around.
Do you think it boils down to a cultural issue?
Stay tuned. I don't know, but there is a sense of urgency or else the board would not have taken action. Chris Galvin is a very, very important figure within Motorola, and this was a tough decision.
Geographically, where is the biggest opportunity?
You get out of North America and you find that any developing country that wants to accelerate their (gross domestic product) is not putting in telephone poles. The Galvin family landed in China early, and they have incredible presence in that geography.
What do you think the role of Linux might be at Motorola? You weren't known to a big fan of Linux at Sun.
Actually, I was a big fan of Linux. Even though I left because I had done that job for four to five years and wasn't going to move up, I bought Cobalt (a Linux server appliance company). The market was changing. There were kids coming out of college, lots of start-ups. I also saw what commodity microprocessors had achieved. When we bought Cobalt, we basically told the executive team and the board that we had to get behind Linux big, but I left soon after, and people just didn't agree with me.
Sun should have owned Linux and should have owned the community. It is Unix, and all Unix developers should have been Sun developers with Linux.
How did you end up at Motorola anyway?
It was like everything else in life: totally something you would never look for. I was happy with Silver Lake and my lifestyle. I didn't look at a whole bunch of opportunities. But as an operating guy you know there is always something that could tweak you a little bit.
I think it was the middle of October. I got a call from a recruiter and said, "Nah. I don't know," but I was intrigued. A week later I got a call, and they asked if I would have dinner with John Pepper and Larry Fuller, two of the board members. I think that was 26 October. I had a great dinner. I told my wife: "These guys are pretty good, and Motorola is Motorola." I met the rest of the search committee in New York -- which happens to include the former CEO of J.P. Morgan. They fired away for three hours. I thought, "My god, I haven't done this in years."
And then it was the end of November, before Thanksgiving, when they told me I was one of the finalists. There was an internal candidate and a strong external candidate. Over Thanksgiving I had a staff meeting with my wife and two sons, my son's wife, my sister and of course, most importantly, my 94-year-old mom. She's 94 and can't see. I said to her, "Mom, what do you think I should do?" She's been telling me for 10 years: "Stop working. Get some rest. You are killing yourself." But she said to me, "I think you ought to go do this." Then the family voted.
Things happened pretty fast. I didn't see a deal until a week ago. It culminated last Sunday.
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