Heres an interesting article from Redherring about McGinn.
Big Fish: McGinn walks
the walk
By Paul Kapustka
Redherring.com
June 29, 1999
For a guy from New Jersey, Rich McGinn sure
acts a lot like a Silicon Valley CEO.
Maybe that's not so
surprising, since his
company, Lucent
Technologies (NYSE: LU),
just added 4,000 Bay Area
employees via its recently
completed acquisition of
Ascend Communications. But
even before Lucent gained
the warm-body West Coast credibility, Mr.
McGinn has shown the ability to take the good
ideas of Silicon Valley and apply them to
Lucent's business. Perhaps that's one of the
reasons the company continues to grow at
breakneck speed under his leadership.
While we don't quite buy Mr. McGinn's
occasional description of Lucent as an Internet
startup (with $33 billion in annual sales?),
neither does the company show any of the
stereotypical stodginess its East Coast telco
heritage would imply. Mr. McGinn, who took
over as CEO in 1997, seems intent on
singlehandedly changing the perception of what
a Bellhead executive should be. Watching him
in action yesterday at a press conference in
San Francisco, you'd never guess that he has
been a Ma Bell insider since 1969, when he
joined AT&T (NYSE: T) as a salesman.
LOOKING GOOD
For starters, there's the issue
of his clothes. Instead of the
typical East Coast suit-and-tie
uniform, we find Mr.
McGinn embracing the
blazer-over-stylish-T-shirt
look, with snappy wool
pants, argyle socks, and
loafers to complete the
ensemble. Though clothes are
just a small (and perhaps
insignificant) way to take the
measure of a man, it's an
initial sign that Mr. McGinn
doesn't feel like a fish out of
water in casual-dress country.
Far more important is Mr.
McGinn's ability to discern what is important
for both companies and employees looking to
prosper in the Internet era. For companies, the
key is finding good people with great technical
ideas, bringing them on board, and keeping
them happy. The way to do that, Mr. McGinn
says, is to compensate them adequately with
good pay and stock options, and give them
cool things to work on -- the kind of thinking
that Silicon Valley was built on. That way,
acquisitions like Lucent's purchase of Ascend
become more than a mere transfer of logos
and market share.
"If you don't win the hearts and minds of the
employees, then all you've bought is a shell,"
says Mr. McGinn.
NEW BLOOD
Of course, not all employees of acquired
companies become part of the larger whole.
Ascend's outgoing CEO, Mory Ejabat,
describes himself as more of the startup type,
and he has no plans to be a significant part of
Lucent's future. Other executives, however,
are eager to join the Lucent fold. One example
is Nexabit Networks' president and CEO,
Mukesh Chatter, who last week agreed to sell
his terabit router startup company to Lucent
for $900 million. Even though Mr. Chatter has
yet to meet Mr. McGinn, he says he's thrilled
by the opportunity to graft his company's
vision onto Lucent's greater plan.
New blood, Mr. McGinn says, is crucial to
Lucent's growth and a natural part of business.
"Thirty percent of the senior executives who
were at Lucent at the time of our IPO are no
longer around," Mr. McGinn says. Of the
current staff, Mr. McGinn says around 40
percent of the senior executives got their
primary business experience at companies
outside the AT&T empire.
"We're not a calcified group of people with
some secret handshake," says Mr. McGinn,
who wants to keep all the startup executives
his company's stock can buy. He has even
begun an internal startup program, where
employees can earn greater equity for their
ideas. If Lucent makes employees' jobs
interesting and rewarding enough, Mr. McGinn
says, there will be no reason for people to
leave -- as long as they don't mind working for
somebody else.
"Look at Steve Ballmer over at Microsoft
[Nasdaq: MSFT]," Mr. McGinn says. "He isn't
the top guy, and he could certainly leave. But
he hasn't." At Lucent, Mr. McGinn says,
"there's lots of room for positions like
Ballmer's, or just below Ballmer's."
OK, so maybe all his ideas don't come from
Silicon Valley. But Mr. McGinn knows there's
more than one place to find success.
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