Batboard

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080326/motorola ... .html?.v=9

ABOUT TIME ! ! ! ! ! ! !

This is worth a read too...

http://gizmodo.com/372565/letter-from-a ... the-ground

Geoffrey Frost was Motorola's Chief Marketing Officer, and the RAZR was his baby. Last month, we got a letter from his former personal adviser, Numair Faraz, written to current Motorola CEO Greg Brown about how a cabal of inept, out-of-touch executives more worried about their golf score than the company drove once mighty Moto into the ground. It got lost in our bloated inbox, but with Moto splitting up today, Engadget reminded us we had it. For anyone wondering what the hell happened to Moto, with its endless string of RAZR knockoffs and crappy handsets, it's a must-read:

I've always considered it Motorola's dirty little secret that the strategy for their entire profit machine was run by the company's CMO—not the rest of the company's executives, who are as inept now as they have ever been. Many close to Geoffrey believed Ed Zander worked him to death, putting the pressure of the fate of the company in his hands.

That's just a touch.

From: Numair Faraz Date: February 5, 2008 7:27:58 PM EST To: Nick Denton Subject: Open letter to Greg Brown

Hi Nick,

Was wondering if you could have your guys publish this on Gizmodo. Would really appreciate it, and I am sure it would get a couple hits.

-numair

==

Dear Greg,

After making repeated attempts to contact you via your office, I am forced to write this open letter to publicly air my grievances concerning Motorola.

As you may or may not recall, I was the young person who worked with Geoffrey Frost during his days as CMO of the company. I was the one quoted in Forbes in 2003 as saying "Motorola's biggest problem is that Samsung kicks ass," and helped Geoffrey in his efforts to revamp the company's mobile lineup -- an effort that eventually lead to the creation of the RAZR. As I told the company's senior designers at Motorola's 75th anniversary meeting: create something cooler and more expensive than anything else out there, and everyone will want it.

After the success of the RAZR, I implored the company to beef up their software expertise, and focus on creating socially networked devices (this, in the era before MySpace and Facebook became the juggernauts they are today). Your predecessor, Ed Zander, had little interest in this, and instead proceeded to prop up Motorola's stock price by parlaying his friendship with Steve Jobs into the ill-fated ROKR effort. Zander, who seemed to care more about his golf score than running one of America's greatest corporations, left all of the hard work to Geoffrey; I've always considered it Motorola's dirty little secret that their entire profit machine and strategy was run by their CMO -- not the rest of the company's executives, who are as inept as they have ever been.

Many believe Ed Zander worked Geoffrey to death, putting the pressure of the fate of the company in his hands. I took his untimely death in 2005 very badly, and knew that the company would head downhill in the aftermath. Ed Zander continued to reap the dividends of Geoffrey's work, and the company made billions in profit from overselling the RAZR. Instead of channelling that money into the obvious -- you know, further development of consumer devices -- Zander purchased enterprise companies such as Symbol, and engineered massive stock repurchases.

As I told Zander in a phone call in 2007, I felt that he was setting the company up for massive failure. He had the audacity to say "well, maybe Geoffrey should have come up with a better successor to the RAZR," and told me to "wait for big things in 2008." I guess he was right -- he got a big golden parachute, and exited out of the company. Your appointment to the position of chief executive gave me cause for hope, and I reached out to you; I knew you were one of the main drivers behind the enterprise acquisitions, and that you had zero expertise in consumer devices. Surely you could use some help in turning that business around?

It really angers me to see that you're really no different from the rest of the incompetent senior executives at Motorola -- but instead of merely being incompetent, you killing the company. Your lack of understanding of the consumer business doesn't give you a valid reason for selling the business; moreover, publicly disclosing your explorations of such a move, in an attempt to keep Carl Icahn off your back, shows how much you value the safety of your incompetence. You have no interest in fighting the good fight and attempting to mould Motorola into the market leader it can and should be; taking control of the handset division, as you have recently done, will accomplish very little -- it will simply give you an ability to say "we tried our best" when you finally cart the business off to the highest bidder.

In order to turn the handset division around, you need to bring in another Geoffrey; someone worldly and dynamic who is more interested in success than their corporate career. You need to task the company's designers with the same mantra that created the RAZR -- make me a phone that looks, feels, and works like a symbol of wealth and privilege. Recognize the superiority of American software, and bring back those jobs so irresponsibly outsourced to China and Russia. Fully embrace embedded Linux and Google's Android initiative, and take the phone operating system out of the stone age. Recognize that, while rich people don't really know what they want, the lower end of the market does -- and fund the development of an online "crowdsourced" device design platform to take advantage of this fact. Get rid of all of your silly, useless marketing, including those overpriced and completely ineffective celebrity endorsements, and do one solidified global campaign with Daft Punk (the only group whose global appeal extends from American hip hoppers to trendy Shanghai club kids to middle-aged Londoners). Understand that the next big feature in handsets isn't a camera or a music player -- it is social connectedness; build expertise in this area, and sell it down the entire value chain.

I've been there when Motorola's handset division was brought back from the brink of death 5 years ago; follow my advice, and we can do it again.

Maybe it sounds like I take the downfall of Motorola personally; I do. It was my experience at Motorola, with people like Geoffrey and all of the loyal employees who still remain, that taught me that Corporate America can and should be; now, with people such as Zander and yourself, Motorola symbolizes the worst of Corporate America. As an immigrant, and someone who has traveled all over the world, I really do appreciate the uniqueness and importance of the American culture of creativity and ingenuity; whereas other countries back their money on gold and commodities, we back ours on our ability to invent the future. As an American, I believe that the protection of this culture is more important than anything else -- as such, I feel it necessary to publicly shame you and your incompetent executive team. The failure of Motorola as an American institution of creativity and innovation, should you let it happen, will be entirely of your doing. Hopefully you'll keep that in mind while relaxing with your golden parachute.


Regards,

Numair Faraz
[email protected]

WTH, it's not April 1, yet.

I don't see any good coming from this, it probably would have been better to split the consumer line and the communications (radio stuff) separate... or perhaps neither.

Being a bit off the 2 way topic, I would have to say the split was absolutely necessary. Now maybe, just maybe the PCS division will have a strong enough leader who will take that division back to its former glory. However the 2 way division (I'm sure it's name has changed 4 times since I left mot about 18 months ago) could use a bit of better leadership but it's not driven by the same people who purchase the everyday cell phone. The 2 Way market is driven by business, security, and public safety not the guy down the road who wants to talk to his wife on a long road trip. Even the small entrapanuer (sp) doesn't drive the 2 way business as his share of the market is really low and their budgets in communication don't tend to include infrastructure or high end new radios. I may be wrong in some of that but that is how I see things as they are currently. Hopefully the economy as a whole will turn around and small companies will begin to have the cash flow necessary to invest in good high end equipment but as of today I don't see it.

Every few years there is a new Motorola strategy, and a few years later found to be a dud. Motorola lost focus on everything but self-promotion of their corporate people and sold out all others below. Who enjoys supporting such a badly run company?

Even though they are out there. I honestly don't see too many large corporations who are run in the same manner as they were back in the 60's and 70's. Corporate stradegy today has gone to what's quick and now instead of the long haul.

Neil Sedaka’s 1962 song, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" keeps coming to mind with Motorola’s current issues although I’m not convinced it’s the correct approach for solving the company’s problems. There’s an embedded set of fundemental Corporate American Management issues that haven’t been addressed starting with the departure of George Fisher and Mort Doppler, then Christopher Galvin, onto Edward Zander and now Greg Brown. And the problems are getting worst by the day with the Corporate Raider “Carl Icahn” who owns 6.3% of Motorola’s Stock portfolio (as much as the individual big Wall Strret Broker Houses).

Karfield

Even though they are out there, I honestly don't see too many large corporations who are run in the same manner as they were back in the 60's and 70's. Corporate strategy today has gone to what's quick and now, instead of the long haul.

Perhaps the long haul doesn't apply in today’s Corporate American Management's Philosophy with what has been taught by the (tenure) professors at our large colleges and universities. It's part of the larger picture of Planned Obsolation for any products. The higher-level management and marketing personnel running around with their MBAs thinking they have all the answers. They will eventually fall from power because of their own philosophy and be swept away as in disposable inept corporate scrap. This is playing out all across America through every corporation and even in our U.S. Federal Government as the middle and lower class citizens (pawns) are pushed from their careers at an earlier age than expected.

In Motorola, Inc. the problems started to evolve in 1985 when Corporate American Management brought the company’s lower level management to the Corporate Tower Building on the Schaumburg campus and devised a plan to eliminate all non 4-year college degreed technicians and technical staff from the corporation by 1995. This had to be approved by Bob Galvin himself and I can believe his not so brilliant son Christopher Galvin must have had something to do with these plans. The plans didn’t evolve as quickly as Corporate had envisioned them to happen. By the summer of 1998 the plans were put into motion and many non-degreed personnel were offered a 3:1 Buy-Out Package and many personnel left the company being close to retirement age or fed up with the baloney we were expected to perform. It left the rest of us with more work to do with less knowledgeable personnel to get important answers from. Our knowledge base was shrinking at an amazing speed and nobody in management even thought about these problems occurring. We were expected to learn the additional responsibilities by Osmosis, which doesn’t provide the needed answers.

By 2000, the Motorola Stock had risen to $185 per share but it was over inflated due to a guy in Corporate Management named Merle Gilmore. Merle was originally hired as an Electrical Engineer and he designed the first digital display pager in 30 minutes. He was brilliant at his “EE” career but rather stupid as a corporate manager. During the later part of 1999, Merle was calling the big Wall Street Broker Houses and feeding them unreliable information about Motorola’s products, which drove up the stock price. I think it’s considered to be inside trading, a basic no-no when dealing with Wall Street.

Of course Motorola’s high level corporate management were running around trying to prevent the sky from falling because of unnecessary worries about the Microsoft software crashing communication systems at midnight on December 31, 1999! Another fiasco and hadn’t Christopher Galvin determined to built clone Apple computers without dealing with Apple’s consent, Motorola wouldn’t have worried about their equipment possibly crashing because the Mac’s were programmed till something like the year 2025 and much better computers. Naturally Motorola’s Semiconductor Sector took the hit from Apple because of Christopher Galvin being so inept. Motorola lost the exclusive contract to supply Apple computers with all of the semiconductors. Everything Christopher Galvin touched while he was employed at the corporation ended up going down the drain as products or entire divisions. Oh he’s got his MBA from Northwestern University but that’s a separate true story in itself.

His father being Bob Galvin, his Board Of Directors did not trust Christopher so they asked Bob Galvin to stay on or with the company for a few more years and Bob agreed. Unfortunately Bob wasn’t able to retire till May of 2002, at the annual stockholders meeting when Christopher had his Dad relieved of his duties at the corporation. Bob was 80 years of age when he retired from the company his father Paul Galvin started as Galvin Mfg., which turned into Motorola, Inc. Bob has certainly pushed the envelope for working there the longest!

In the early spring of 2001, the big Wall Street Broker Houses called Motorola and spoke to Christopher Galvin, CEO and Bob Barnett, the President on a conference call. The executives at the Wall Street Broker Houses told Galvin and Barnett that they felt Motorola was financially bleeding from the seams but Christopher Galvin and Bob Barnett assured Wall Street that Motorola was financially sound and there was plenty of money to cover their expenses.

Of course the Iridium Commercial Project hadn’t lived up to it’s expectations and the sales personnel were inept where and how to sell this unique communications product. Motorola’s Account Representatives weren’t allowed to sell the units to the specialized or niche markets. Someone in their infinite MBA wisdom allowed anyone from a sales background, like a shoe salesman or a automobile sales person could sell this product to the Shipping / Ocean Freighters, Oil Exploration, Scientific Explorers or Worldwide Service companies in the middle of no where without having any knowledge of radio and microwave communications. Nice theory but it didn’t work and the sales numbers that Motorola provided were pie in the sky figures for the period to sell these handheld units. Of course the handhelds cost $6,000.00 each and the air-time cost was $5.00 per minute. Christopher Galvin backed up everything by promising the Wall Street investors that “if” the numbers weren’t where they were predicted, Motorola would financially compensate the investors for the financial investment losses.

I should point out that the Iridium System was far more expensive than the average Cellular System considering it would have 66 satellites revolving around the earth. It was not the ordinary communication system to be used by the average everyday person. When it was launched, I thought to myself, “Who could afford this specialized system?” I only could determine one user and this was our U.S. Federal Government. If you think back, our military personnel were using these handhelds in Bosnia to communicate back to the Pentagon. All of the hoopla about dumping the satellites into the ocean was pure hogwash by Christopher Galvin. In fact, in June of 2004, I met a female amateur radio operator at a Field Day site who had just been let go by Motorola. She was assembling the latest version of Iridium handhelds for testing and shipment! I even notice the Iridium handhelds being rented out in Alaska two years ago.

In May of 2001, Christopher Galvin sold off Motorola’s Government Electronics Sector to General Dynamics for less than the recent government contract that Motorola received to build more military equipment to pay for his commercial Iridium venture gone bad. In August of 2001, apparently his conscious had caught up to him and Christopher Galvin and Bob Barnett called the same Wall Street Broker Houses to inform those executive brokers that they had lied to them in the spring regarding Motorola financial situation. The executive stock-brokers did not have a good sense of humor when they heard this information. Motorola had already dropped to $39 per share and with this information the stock plummeted to $7.50 per share less than what the capital equipment was worth. The stock was one niche above “Junk Bond” status and Motorola’s credit rating went from triple A to C. Oh Yeah, Christopher Galvin has a MBA but he must have been out to lunch everyday when he was suppose to be attending class getting his education.

By September 11, 2001, hadn’t Christopher sold the Government Electronics Sector, Motorola would have been financially in a better position to pay off the Iridium debt.

Then the Wall Street Broker Houses convinced Christopher Galvin that the Semiconductor Segment was pulling down the Motorola stock prices and he fell for that advice to spin off that group or division. Of course Wall Street was yanking his inept chain to get even with Christopher for lying to them. The media was having a field day with Christopher Galvin’s Motorola presenting more damage to the corporation. More personnel were being laid-off. Oh it was a three-ring circus with all rings active at the same time! And what ever Chris tried to do, to stomp out fires came out wrong! You would have had to be there to experience “The Live Christopher Galvin Story” as it unfolded.

By summer of 2003, Motorola was celebrating being in business for 75 years although many of us wondered how much longer the corporation would survive with the inept Christopher Galvin at the helm. Chris decided that all of the Motorola employees that were still working could come out to a field on the campus and have their picture taken forming the Motorola Bat Wing Logo and he would be in the center of the picture. We knew he was stepping down from being the CEO/COB that afternoon and it wasn’t soon enough for many of the engineering staff. They took the picture from a helicopter and Christopher jumped into his limo and rode back to the Corporate Tower Building to get away from the employees. Christopher had no personality to mingle with the everyday employees like his father Bob did and I think this issue made Bob such a likeable person. We use to refer to Bob as “Uncle Bob” because he could communicate with his employees much like a good friend or a relative. His son Christopher never exhibited this talent he was always guarded by ten security people that kept employees from speaking to him directly. I guess Christopher must have thought that he was a King type figure and didn’t have to associate with his (employee) pawns. He forgot that his Dad’s employees allowed Christopher to be born with a Silver spoon in his mouth. Personally I think it should have been shoved in his lower posterior as far as it could have gone to discomfort him everyday he’s alive and remind him that there are other people doing the work.

When Edward Zander started his employment at Motorola in Schaumburg January 2004, he decided that he didn’t want to associate with the Corporate American Management team on campus so Motorola leased an office in downtown Chicago near his high rise condo and that’s where he did his CEO thing. Zander’s wife didn’t like Schaumburg or Chicago and didn’t want to associate with us low life slugs so she stayed in Pebble Beach, California at their home out there. This meant Ed Zander had to commute to the west coast every weekend to be with his wife. His Board Of Directors allowed him to use Motorola’s Corporate Jet every weekend with a crew of 5 people and naturally the fuel to fly the jet at the company’s expense. Ed Zander was educated as a Electrical Engineer but he was nothing more than a Corporate Raider, Hatchet man and didn’t give a damn about the employees or the Motorola product lines. In his four years as CEO, he saw the completion of Freescale (former Motorola Semiconductor Segment) spin off and sale. Then he sold Motorola’s Automotive Segment for less than it was worth and the Wall Street Broker Houses predicted that Motorola Automotive Segment was poised to generate $44 Billion Dollars for the corporation but it was chopped off and sold. He over lived the RAZR Cellular product life into extinction and had nothing to present at the Las Vegas Show other than a Yellow bicycle, which he should have been ridden out on a rail for his incompetence, stupidity and raping the corporation of millions of dollars. He’s leaving Motorola with a $7 Million Dollar Parachute Buy-Out Package and more damage to the corporation.

Now we’ve got Greg Brown, CEO who was hired by the inept Christopher Galvin, put into place by Ed Zander and more changes I fear for the current non Corporate American Management employees being shoved out the door with nothing to show for their years of service. I’m almost convinced that Motorola will fade into oblivion in the next couple of years leaving all of the former employees hanging in mid air.

Now if you were to graduate from college with BSEE and want to work for Motorola, you’ll be assigned a technicians job validating software features on the equipment. If you want to design electronic equipment for Motorola, you’ll need a BSEE, a MSEE and a Professional Engineering State Certification from the State of Illinois. Oh, I should point out that the state P.E. requires two years of active employment in your career field before you can even take the test. Good Luck on designing any thing for Motorola, Inc. That’s been Outsourced to India, China, Russia or any where else besides the Good Old U.S.A.

Dan

Dan,
It's worse than that with the PE. You have to first take the Fundamentals of Engineering, which means that you have to have graduated from an ABET accredited college. After passing that and four years of experience (if you graduated from an engineering program), only then can you take the PE exam.

"You must have four years of engineering experience if you graduated from an accredited four-year engineering program or eight years experience if you graduated from an accredited four year program in an engineering-related science."