Edward Zander - Career at Motorola

Career At Motorola

On January 5, 2004, Zander was selected by the Motorola board of directors to succeed Chris Galvin who retired in September 2003, ending a three generation reign of his family at the head of the electronics giant.

The primary candidates considered to replace him were Zander and Mike Zafirovski, though well-known executives such as AT&T Corporation's President Betsy Bernard, Qwest Communications International's Richard Notebaert and Verizon Communications' Lawrence Babbio were also considered. Earlier, Zafirovski had proved himself an excellent executive at Motorola. He arrived from General Electric and led the cell phone business to profitability. Unfortunately for him, the board was looking for a more radical change in leadership. Even though Zafirovski was virtually an outsider himself (having served at the corporation for only three years), the board of directors went with someone with more experience in a complex organization like Motorola. Zander’s impressive career at Sun and his radical "mover and shaker" attitude won the board over and he was given the position. Zafirovski was disappointed and was expected to leave the company, especially with his history of reported run-ins with the board of directors but stayed until 31 January 2005, when he resigned.

Zander had a lot to prove, and he quickly went to work. His first task was to oversee the new spin-off that Motorola had begun just shortly before he joined, Freescale Semiconductor. He announced that he would focus the company on its consumer electronics business and start taking better care of its customers (he even assigned the Chief Information Officer, Samir Desai, to one of their largest and angriest customers, Nextel). During his time, he acquired 12 companies and wound down poor-performing businesses. He also ramped up the business units that sell radio equipment to the government, cable set-top box components and wireless communications products.

Zander came into a tough corporate culture - Motorola's departments have been referred to as "warring tribes". He created a bonus structure that based 25% of all bonuses on customer satisfaction, meeting product deadlines, cooperation between departments, etc. He started looking to target major corporations for communications gear and services, instead of just aiming at customers of the phones and telecom companies with wireless gear. A reorganization of Motorola's business divisions became likely. Zander wanted to see new types of products that focused on melding Internet technologies with wireless phone technologies. He established the philosophy of "seamless mobility" to integrate Motorola's products and create a sense of unity within the company.

After Motorola posted a $181 million loss for the first quarter of 2007, Zander came under increased pressure, with Carl Icahn first demanding a share buyback, then a seat on the board of directors.

Zander has since been named a defendant in a securities fraud class action, on behalf of investors who purchased Motorola stock between July 19, 2006 and January 4, 2007, as a result of allegedly false and misleading public statements issued by Motorola during that time. Zander received $12.5 million in incentive-based pay, much of it dependent on Motorola's financial results, as well as $1.5 million in salary during 2006.

Zander capitalized on the success of the Motorola RAZR too long and was slow adopting 3G. The company lost market share to Samsung and LG Electronics. By 2007, without new cellphones that carriers wanted to offer, Motorola sold tens of millions of Razrs and their offshoots by slashing prices, causing margins to collapse in the process. Under Zander, Ron Garriques who was responsible for the successful RAZR departed for Dell Inc., while Stu Reed failed to turn around the struggling mobile handset division. Only after Sanjay Jha took the reins of Motorola's Mobile Devices Unit that it finally managed to right itself.

In a sign of how out of touch Zander was with the evolving cellular phone market, he rode a yellow bike onto the stage in Las Vegas for his keynote talk in January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show. Instead of development new and exciting products, Motorola placed Razrs into colored lingerie (red in February for Valentine's Day) while Apple Inc. unveiled the revolutionary new iPhone.

Zander stepped down as CEO on 1 January 2008, succeeded by Greg Brown, who was prior to then President and Chief Operating Officer. He was succeeded as chairman by former AT&T CEO David Dorman in May 2008.

Business positions
Preceded by
Scott McNealy
COO of Sun Microsystems
1998 - 2002
Succeeded by
Scott McNealy
Preceded by
Scott McNealy
President of Sun Microsystems
1999 - 2002
Succeeded by
Scott McNealy
Preceded by
Christopher Galvin
CEO of Motorola
2004 - 2008
Succeeded by
Greg Brown

Read more about this topic:  Edward Zander

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)