For a hot-shot CEO taking over a troubled company, mass firings are the ultimate quick fix, the accounting equivalent of crack: cheap, easy to score, instantly gratifying, and highly addictive.
When I came into the CEO office, I basically changed the entire management team. We knew that we had to change the company, so we needed a new set of leaders.
A lot of deals are done or not done because chief executives are not fully aligned to shareholders.
After the non-Japanese Carlos Ghosn was brought in by Nissan to turn around the struggling auto manufacturer, he made English the company's official working language.
What was really tough for me was that Lars Magnus Ericsson founded Ericsson in 1876; we've always had a consumer product. And I'm the 16th CEO of Ericsson, and I decided that we don't have any consumer products anymore.
The CEO is, by far, the most important decision for a company... The company is going to rise and fall with the CEO.
When I became CEO of Xerox 10 years ago, the company's situation was dire. Debt was mounting, the stock sinking and bankers were calling. People urged me to declare bankruptcy, but I felt personally responsible for tens of thousands of employees.
Deciding whether or not to bring in an outside CEO is one of the most gut-wrenching decisions that a founder will ever need to make.
When I became CEO, I was really worried that we were in commoditized segments that were mature and no longer growing. So we made a radical pivot into health technology because that is one of the world's unmet needs.
In the fall of the year 2000, there just happened to be a decision point when they asked me to become Chief Executive Officer of the company. It was a time when, as you remember, we were starting to have some real problems in the California energy markets.
If the CEO is not going to give you a fair chance, you're probably not going to win.
It used to be that you would go in to see a CEO, and you would ask them, 'Is your company for sale?' and if they said 'No, we have no interest in selling,' that was sort of the end of the conversation.
