Feature/background article on CEO's of FDRY and EXTR:
From militaristic to laissez faire, top network executives favor different styles for keeping their companies operating smoothly
BY CASSIMIR MEDFORD
Network World, 4/24/00
nwfusion.com
Bobby Johnson Sr. spent 26 years on combat alert. He kept a leather bag packed, ready for a call that could come at any time, be it the middle of the night or during a Sunday barbecue. Bobby Jr. remembers his father grabbing that bag, patting him on the head and appointing him man of the house. "If anything happens to me, you take over the job of protecting this family. Do you understand?" Then off he'd go.
Bobby Sr. was a member of an elite U.S. Army Special Forces unit. His discipline and commitment in the face of life-threatening circumstances made a lasting impression on his son.
Today, the younger Johnson is more than three decades removed from those days when his father would issue him field commissions to take charge of the family unit. Just returned from his own "mission," a business trip to Japan with a pit stop in southern California, he is distracted and jetlagged. It comes with the territory, running gigabit switch vendor Foundry Networks, one of the hottest network vendors in the world, and an absolute darling of Wall Street. Based in San Jose, Foundry posted one of the highest first-day percentage gains in IPO history when its share price more than quintupled last September. Leading a company on the fast track through start-up and into its early growth phase can be stressful, particularly on days like today.
"When I get stressed, all I have to do is think back to my father's job. My job is a piece of cake in comparison; it's not life and death," says Johnson, who is Foundry's president and CEO.
Well, maybe not literally. But Johnson, by his admission, runs Foundry as if it is do or die. He is a demanding perfectionist. "'Do it over until you get it right' is his mantra," says Ken Cheng, Foundry's vice president of marketing. "Bobby is as demanding as anybody in this industry."
Johnson runs the company with a drill sergeant's attention to detail - the hours are long and the mood is sober. His in-your-face style can be taxing, but the rewards are uniquely attractive at Foundry, which is 60% employee-owned.
"I demand a lot, but I lead by example. No one puts in more hours than I do," Johnson says. "My style, which I learned at Hewlett-Packard, is management by walking around. I meet with my staff informally all the time. But for all my demands, our decisions are made by the group."
A student of military history and strategy, Johnson brings a lot of combat techniques to the ultracompetitive world of networking. "The goal of business is pleasing the customer but you have to get to the customer first, and military strategy is useful in gaining market leverage," he says. "We're a fast-moving company and we are trying to outmaneuver our competitors."
That's an apt job description for the few dozen executives, most of them men, who call the shots in the roller coaster world of networking. The potential rewards are astronomical, but the personal costs are steep - many of them routinely work 70- to 80-hour weeks and spend at least 40% of their time on the road. They must keep the sometimes-competing interests of stockholders, employees, customers and a horde of hungry analysts in precarious balance when making key decisions.
No fear, no failure
"There isn't a heck of a lot of room for failure in this business," says Gordon Stitt, president and CEO of Extreme Networks, a Foundry competitor based in Santa Clara. "This environment is changing so fast that you need to nudge people and ask, 'Have you looked at different alternatives or did you use only the mindset you came here with?' I think that's the most important aspect of leadership for me."
Prodding people to look at things differently is common among networking leaders. Many have lived through disruptive technological changes that have relegated whole segments of the networking industry to the technological junkyard. They cannot afford to become complacent, or apply old formulas to new problems.
For Stitt, that means creating an ever-widening field of options. In twice-weekly executive meetings and quarterly brainstorming sessions, Stitt prods his executive team with rapid-fire questions designed to uncover new ways of doing things.
"Everything is challenged at these meetings. That has become such a part of the company culture," Stitt says.
The meetings are casual in style but combative in content and procedure. For Stitt, this aggressiveness is part of a chain reaction triggered by Extreme's board of directors and investors who hold his feet to fire. They demand that he challenge convention, and Stitt in turn exhorts his lieutenants to think unconventionally.
"The way you make your mark as a small company is to be disruptive - to bring out new technology and make business moves that cause people to take notice," Stitt says. [snip]
"At times, not everybody is behind an idea but we have to make a call," Extreme's Stitt says. "Ultimately, it's my call. The worst thing to do in this business is to not make a decision." |
