Interesting read about Pearse Flynns' management style for the long weekend
Monday 24 July 2000
The bulldog, unchained
His bark is Irish friendly. But when the needs of his master, Alcatel SA, demand it, globe-trotting Pearse Flynn has a go-for-the-jugular bite.
Pauline Tam
The Ottawa Citizen
Rod MacIvor, The Ottawa Citizen / Pearse Flynn apologized to the five per cent of a Newbridge sales convention audience who, he said, shouldn't be there. They simply weren't good enough.
Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen / It's rare for Alcatel's Pearse Flynn to touch down anywhere for long; rarer still is it a personal time out.
Above the din of a Kanata pub, Pearse Flynn drains his Irish ale and points a mock accusing finger: "You know who I'm turning down tonight to meet you?"
Well, let's see. Sting's in town for a one-night gig. "And Shawn Colvin," he says. "I got VIP tickets."
Pretty sharp, for one of the top brass at Alcatel SA of France who spends only a week a month in Ottawa. In a typical week, Flynn's job can take him around the world. His home isn't even in this country. But no, there will be no concert for this jet-set guy tonight. Instead, at an hour when most dads are reading bedtime stories to their little ones, this father of three is heading back to Alcatel's March Road offices for a late-night conference call, having munched on little more than a bruschetta appetizer for dinner.
Not that anyone is waiting at home. The kids -- aged 10, seven and four -- are on holiday in Florida with their mother. It will be the weekend before Flynn joins them for a two-week break. "I'm going to not log in and not take my mobile phone."
With all the travelling he does for work, the family is so used to being apart that they rely on a video conferencing line, installed at home in Scotland, to keep in touch when Dad's on the road. "They're a very independent sort," he says. "I guess you have to be to live with me -- and the lifestyle."
Because Flynn commands a worldwide staff of 40,000 -- roughly one-third of the corporation's overall workforce -- his punishing schedule is a fact of life. His position in a global company may demand it. But Alcatel's role in the fiercely competitive telecommunications industry guarantees it.
On his business card, Flynn is -- gulp -- President of the Carrier Networking Group and Carrier Internetworking Division. But really, that's just geek-speak for chief bulldog. His job is to see that many, many telephone and computer network switches are sold. That way, he can march the troops toward record-breaking earnings every quarter.
For Alcatel, there is $3 billion (and growing) riding on having happy customers around the globe. This calls for a people person who, on command, can also put some fire in the belly of the great corporate beast. It is a delicate balance that evidently suits Flynn. It also helps that 16-hour days, endless red-eye flights and jet lag (he claims to be immune) don't slow him down. "It's actually quite nice because you step out of one world and into another."
When it comes to mastering the transatlantic commute, Flynn is by no means alone.
Take Clarence Chandran, heir apparent to the top job at Nortel Networks Corp., one of Alcatel's main rivals in the telephone equipment business. Nortel's recently appointed No. 2 man has homes in Toronto and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. He, too, is expected to make regular rounds at Nortel offices around the world.
In an Internet economy, the dizzying speed of technological change, not to mention the relentless pressures of stock performance, require the portable executive to log air miles like car miles. Cellphones, e-mail and video-conferencing may lighten the load. But there's little freedom in being plugged in 24/7.
In May, Mr. Flynn's staff were releasing quarterly earnings results when the boss was in Bermuda on holiday. One morning, he sent his wife into the kids' room so that he could take a conference call in bed. "Work makes you do unbelievable things," he says. "It's expected that you're directly accessible all the time."
At Alcatel, the nomadic lifestyle is common among the 12 executive vice-presidents who report to Mr. Flynn. As in Brian Keating, a strategy man in charge of making Alcatel a force to be reckoned with among its competitors. Mr. Keating, his wife and their two children make their home in a suburb of London. But he spends half of every month travelling for business. One week he's in the United States, the next he's in Asia. With regular 16-hour days, Mr. Keating, who's 37, admits creating a stress-free zone is work in itself.
"It's very difficult to switch off. If you go skydiving, you don't think about work. Or if you scuba-dive. You have to concentrate on your breathing so you just can't think about anything else. I never think about work when I'm doing those things."
Mr. Keating and Mr. Flynn are on the road so often that they hook up for meetings whenever they're in the same airports. This discipline holds for business trips. "Whenever we're in a foreign city, 7 o'clock in the morning, it's in the lobby downstairs," says Mr. Keating. "It doesn't matter what time you went to bed the night before."
Lately, Mr. Flynn seems to be running on adrenaline. In the last year, he went from being an obscure executive at Kanata-based Newbridge Networks Corp. -- a company of about 6,750 -- to a top gun at Alcatel. In the process, he guided an ailing firm out of its earnings slump and helped engineer the spectacular $7.1-billion U.S. sale of Newbridge to Alcatel. All before his 37th birthday.
Not surprisingly, he considers the deal his single biggest achievement to date. But getting there was no cakewalk.
Shortly after joining Newbridge in February 1999, he stunned colleagues at a company sales convention by dressing up as the Scottish warlord William Wallace, alias Braveheart, complete with kilt and five-foot sword. While the gag drew laughs, the mood changed swiftly when Mr. Flynn apologized to the five per cent of the audience who, he said, shouldn't be there. They simply weren't good enough.
This act of sugar-coated ruthlessness was a sign of things to come. Before the year was out, he was promoted to president and second-in-command, after Newbridge founder Terence Matthews. Weeks after his appointment, Mr. Flynn ordered pink slips for 750 workers worldwide. For a struggling company that was preparing itself to be sold, the move was considered necessary.
"I believe in the cruel-to-be-kind principle," Mr. Flynn explains. "I think the mistake people make is that they insult people's intelligence. And so they come up with all these cliches and standard answers. The reality is, if you tell people the truth, nine out of 10 actually respect it. That doesn't mean you always tell people good news. Try laying people off. It has to be done. But if that ever gets easy, you really have a problem."
At first glance, Mr. Flynn seems an unlikely corporate hatchet man, let alone your everyday suit. He wears a dark jacket and buttoned-down navy shirt. He's stout but not chubby, with a wide, pink, youthful face and most expressive eyebrows, second only, perhaps, to Roger Moore.
His only accessory is a Motorola cellphone with Web access, allowing him to retrieve e-mail, which he hates. In the course of 30 minutes, he gets two calls before he turns it off.
Upon arriving at the pub, he chats with colleagues at an adjacent table. His jocular manner is so infectious that, when a photographer takes Mr. Flynn's picture behind the bar, a waitress who takes him for a celebrity wants in, too.
"Oftentimes, he comes across as quite relaxed and jovial but he's actually quite disciplined," says Mr. Keating. "When I was first hired, Pearse told me the type of person he was looking for. Steely-eyed warrior was his expression and he's the best example of that himself."
Mr. Flynn is Irish by birth and inclination. He prides himself on having a common touch. He likes to think his working-class roots in the fishing village of Ballycotton (population 600) steeled him for a life of honest labour. "I read the book, The Perfect Storm, and I said to my wife, 'This place reminds me of where I came from.' They live hard, they work hard and then they play hard."
As a teenager, Mr. Flynn spent summers trawler- and lobster-fishing. Later, he worked as a roadie for an Irish band and flirted briefly with standup comedy while juggling a degree in applied physics. In Scotland, he cut his teeth managing a computer production line before joining Compaq Computers' Europe team as employee number seven. "007 was my badge," he says grinning.
His years in sales taught him to have "zero time for process people." Above all, Mr. Flynn is deeply suspicious of those who take on airs. That goes for himself especially. "The higher up you go, the more there are people who try to attach themselves to you just because of the position you're in. And you have to be very careful to recognize those types."
His lyrical brogue is suddenly harsh and his face darkens.
"There will be limpets that will come along that will try to suck all the life out of you. They will build a barrier around you to keep you away from the real world. You get told lots of bullshit. I mean, people will tell you what you want to hear because they want to please you."
At Newbridge, Mr. Flynn found ways to get around this. One was to hand out sticky notes to his staff and tell them to write down what was on their minds after he left the room. "I'd say, 'There's only one rule in this game. Don't tell me your manager is an asshole because I probably know that already.' I guarantee you, you do five of those and you'll know what the issues are in the organization."
Because of his aversion to the filtered message, Mr. Flynn doesn't rely on managers to relay customer feedback. He goes on the road to find out for himself. It's one reason he's constantly plane-hopping.
The week before took him from his home outside Glasgow to San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. From there, he flew to Amsterdam to catch the Euro 2000 semi-finals with a customer. ("C'mon, I had a sale done!") From Amsterdam, he flew to Glasgow, then back to Amsterdam "to meet with a customer and go to the final." Then, it was on to Paris, New York (via the Concorde) and a private plane to Ottawa.
"You get treated like a baby," he says of the endless hotels, drivers and staff assigned by his assistant to look after him. "Sometimes, I read my itinerary and go, 'Oh my God, if somebody wasn't here to pick me up, I wouldn't know where I'm going in a strange city.' I don't even know the address of the office or where the office is."
When that happens, he looks forward to regular visits to Ireland with mom and six sisters and brothers -- some of whom are still fishermen. "They take the shit out of your head very quickly," he says with a snap of the fingers. "I find that's really good because it bring you back to Earth."
He considers his weekends family time, though lately, he hasn't made it home regularly. This remains a sore point. But when Mr. Flynn is home, he likes nothing better than to kick back in his renovated 3.5-acre country estate, built in 1890 and bought from a pair of aristocrats. "I like not shaving and just being an absolute slob on the weekends. Not going out to restaurants. I hate eating out."
His vices are soccer and music. Stereos and CDs are plentiful in the Flynn household. So are sporty cars. The garage holds a Toyota Land Cruiser, Porsche, BMW convertible and a newly acquired Mercedes. "I went out to buy a pair of shoes one day and came back with a car," he says, chuckling.
While the sale of Newbridge has raised Alcatel shares and made Mr. Mr. Flynn a very rich man (he won't say how rich), he has other long-term goals. For the time being, he is under contract with Alcatel, but won't say for how long. Ideally, he'd like to take on another European company and lead a charge into the North American market -- something he's getting a taste of in his current job.
"I'm not a status quo guy. Actually, I'm bad for an organization if you want incremental change. I'd be the anti-Christ. I think I'm better if somebody gives me a company that's struggling a little bit. I'm the guy to turn it around. Turn it around and then get rid of me. Because I do have a shelf life." |
