Mike Z.’s Time Management Goals

By Mark Evans | Published: December 31, 2007

Mikez-7
The Wall St. Journal asked a number of CEOs how they will try to manage their time better in 2008.

In an answer we can all probably appreciate, Nortel’s Mike Zafirovski said he hopes to make e-mail less of a distraction. “I know I get too many emails, and probably issue too many as well,” he said, adding he also wants to start and finish internal meetings on time this year.

Speaking of how Mike Z., what do you think he has to do better in 2008 – other than managing his time?

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  • Jon

    Stop clipping coupons and DO SOMETHING.

  • A Close Observer

    Grow revenue, or sell to Moto.

  • many

    maybe he could do another 10:1 reverse split?

  • jjh

    Stop outsourcing good American and Canadian jobs, show some loyalty to the workers that created the technology that allowed this company to grow in the past. The American gov’t along with other high tech companies are selling us out on the belief outsourcing is good for America, give me a break. How about focusing on creating a product companies want and stop stripping away our careers

  • Dead Long

    I agree…grow rev or sell to anyone. You have killed every possibly interested shareholder…nearly bankrupted me. Quit emailing, quit talking and show us some results. Hope corporate had a great vacation while we were all getting CORED TO DEATH!

  • Big Al

    Do another billion dollar debt to equity conversion, hire John Chambers as CEO, promote Hackney, buy CISCO and reinstall Dunn’s bonus program.

  • Steven

    And the off shore “engineers” are simply bad. Give them a problem where they simply look up the solution, no problem.

    Give them a problem where they have to come up with the solution, forget it.

  • Observer

    Start chasing past officers starting with Frank Dunn. Re-institute a dedicated and independent ethics officers full time. Send Motorola a Christmas card next year. Fire buddy Hackney to appease employees or if Enterprise experiences any slowdown. Do not announce averaging down if 20 bucks continues to strike you as a buying opportunity.

    Start looking sinister to reflect the companies contradictions, ultimatums, etc., because everyone wants to hug you, you look too honest, acts alone are not enough it confuses people, besides nice guys finish last there, look what happened to Owens or Daichendt, look meaner and talk tough.

    Resign fast with big bucks if the stock continues to tumble after mega dilution or if they ever need to restate again, it ain’t worth the aggravation. Let them risk careers you can retire with what they pay while losing money.

    Do not attend disaster sites to hand hold.

    Pay the hundreds of millions for the SAP software or get accounting working as SEC is monitoring progress now. Reevaluate the Air Canada bed time story you like so much and review its impact to investors, creditors, customers, etc.

    No more fireside chats, or Chapleau Legion think tanks, cornering 3rd world railway markets, etc. puleeze… worse yet no more BSNLs or acquisitions like PEC et. al.

    Brush up on Photosynthesis acknowledging plants require carbon dioxide not oxygen, albeit the grow or perish analogy is a perfect heads up…dunno about the tall mountains to climb or rocky roads though, and “lots of work reiteration” is an understatement, and get real with becoming a great company again as it won’t triple in size ever, even in the 3 to 5 years you said 2 years ago. Do not talk with customers about insolvency only sales please.

    Don’t skip any ESL classes, you’re lookin good, like me, better lookin every day. Don’t argue where Alexanders father Philip’s tomb was found with your engineers. Tip your taxi drivers in NY even though they drive like they promote passengers taking sedatives, and never drive with Hackney.

    Heck, this is just off the top of my head, but if you need any more ideas, just e-mail me =)

  • http://deleted Nortel Watcher

    Get rid of Hackney. He’s a walking anger-management liability and the enterprise business is more complicated than running a light bulb plant. Replace Hackney with someone who can see the future of the enterprise segment and knows how to leverage your partnerships.

    Get rid of Lowe. Replace him with someone who understands the impact that Google et al are going to have on the service provider segment. Re-invent your carrier business to focus on infrastructure for large scale hosted services and intelligent clients. Voice is an app now guys, not an infrastructure. Give up on IMS…IMS is so 2003. Even if it does fly, do you really think any service provider in their right mind would buy something as complex as IMS from the likes of you? Decide whether or not you want to play in the WiMax game. If so, get in with both feet and do more than just dabble and babble. If not, shut up and go away. Consider consolidating your optical and carrier businesses for more efficiency gains.

    Throw dollars (or in your case pennies) at your optical business. The second wave is coming, thanks to digital video. You don’t want to miss that gravy train. You have a good team in place. Don’t starve them just because they don’t like to grab young women’s faces.

    Drop by to check on Wendt. Is that guy doing anything?

    Get rid of Roese, or at least demote him a half dozen levels. Being an effective CTO-leader requires social skills, and he has none. Being the corporate eunuch doesn’t excuse him from his responsibilities to more effectively schmooz. No wonder he has no impact with the business units.

    Ask yourself what Riedel has done for you lately. As a CSO, he matches your corporate strategy perfectly. Both are invisible.

    Hire someone to fix your sales organization, preferably someone ex-Cisco.

    Pull the rip cord on your golden parachute. The value of the company is half what it was when you arrived, the traditional businesses are shrinking, there is no credible growth opportunity for you on the near term horizon, and your cabinet is a reflection of your own flaws. Time to go before the company can’t afford to pay you to leave.

    Close the door on your way out.

  • Employee or Victim?

    I’d say Mike’s first priority ought to be to stop the harassment of current employees. It’s no secret that Nortel is trying to get people to leave by making their lives hell. It’s cheaper than layoffs. They can’t fire a whole group like they did in France (and what would France do if it were discovered that at the time Nortel fired all those people their jobs were quietly moved to a much lower cost center?) Mike, we make the company what it is, you’re losing a lot of good talent.

  • qwack

    Things to do in 2008.

    1. Fire Hackney
    2. Fire Roese
    3. Fire Lowe
    4. Fire MacKinnon
    5. Fire Wendt
    6. Fire Edwards
    7. Fire Donovan
    8. Fire Pangia
    9. Harvest the money from CDMA, GSM, switching, enterprise routing.
    10. Invest in enterprise (targeted areas), optical, IMS, VOIP.
    11. Exit WIMAX, mesh, LTE.
    12. Make salespeople work for commissions instead of just waiting for the orders to roll in for legacy products. No new business – no big commission checks.
    13. Declare victory on 6 sigma and move on to something effective.
    14. Fire half the PR staff and stop sending out Press Releases on “Nortel wins GSM-R deal for $1.5M in Lower Slobonia with LS Railways”
    15. Hire some lawyers that can make money off IPR like optical, OFDM, MIMO.
    16. Fire Haydon – oops – he already left.
    17. Buy copy of Rosetta Stone Software and improve English.

  • Steven

    “15. Hire some lawyers that can make money off IPR like optical, OFDM, MIMO.”

    I’ve since worked after Nortel in an environment where those patenting receive actual royalties on generated income. It changes the focus from endless patent spinning to finding solutions with immediate practical application that generate hard revenue for the company. It also allows a very direct method of ranking an engineer’s performance in R&D. Those comfortable with the present system would probably be very uncomfortable with this more hard nosed policy, but that says boatloads in itself.

    Contributions where the true calibre of the work is what counts completely changes the group dynamics (and politics). Hopefully that extends to the bottom line.

    Again, that is an entirely different culture to what Nortel has come to today.

  • Edward

    Employees can fight back.
    HR, Lawsuits, etc.
    Of course that employee must have a legitimate
    argument and just cause.

  • Casual Observer

    Speaking of how Mike Z., what do you think he has to do better in 2008 – other than managing his time?
    –

    Sadly, I think it was too late even when he took over. Real estate had begun falling in some parts of the US in January 2006 and continued throughout until ensuing in a credit crisis the likes of which world has never seen. Many CEOs will be powerless in 2008 in dealing with the effects of shrinking credit and slowing economy. This week’s fall in the stock market is further evidence of a lack of confidence in credit markets and a contracting economy in the United States.

  • Just an opinion

    Steven,

    You should know that there are Nortel products completely “off shored”. And they are doing great. Dig a little to find out what products are no longer present in Canada/US.

  • http://deleted Nortel Watcher

    Casual Observer – I disagree strongly.

    Yes, the economy is a little challenged right now…but that is no excuse for Nortel. Nortel is losing market *share* of existing businesses. Nortel has no visible growth plan. Nortel now has a weak cabinet relative to its peers. None of these issues are tied to the state of the economy. Cisco and Microsoft are both big and established companies living in the same economy but neither company’s stock has lost half it’s value in the period Mike Z has been at Nortel, and both have visible futures bets.

  • http://deleted Nortel Watcher

    Just an opinion – I agree. Off-shore development can be just as effective as on-shore. It all depends on how it’s managed. If it isn’t going well, look at who’s managing it to find the problems. Off-shore development for big R&D companies is a fact of life, not a ‘management option’. Complaining about off-shore development is about as productive as complaining about the weather. It’s time for all the whiners to recognize this and move on.

  • Napoleon

    Nortel Watcher.
    You are not making any sense.
    Off Shore development is suppose to be “BETTER”
    ..much better than On Shore.
    That is why people outsource.
    To be just as effective is a failure.
    And ..for the most part off shore is less
    effective.
    It is a total failure..and I know.
    Only guys making money are the executives who
    get paid bonuses for coming up with a dumb ass
    plan while a company loses quality and money
    due to off shore.
    Off shore is fine for making scissors and wrenches or small trinkets unless you are Huaweii cheating on everything they make.
    These are the facts.
    Big business leaders make money..that’s it.

  • Nortel watcher

    When the subject of Nortel being acquired or merged comes up, some have stated the difficulty with management and its suitor obtaining the Canadian government’s blessing. Bureaucracy aside, Nortel has less baggage today; nonetheless, it still begs the question of why would any competitor want to acquire them?

    Consider this, CSCO started a share buy-back program in September 2001, exactly one year before Nortel hit its all-time low of $4.50(adjusted for the recent 10X1 reverse split), and had ignored acquiring Nortel or, for that matter, Lucent too, preferring instead to continue its share repurchase to what has amounted to $40+ billion today.

    Was it due to a lack of synergy? Would it have been a distraction to its overall strategy? Whatever the reasons not to acquire a rival like Nortel, its potential ROI in the long-term was surely viewed inferior to the merits of Cisco’s share repurchase.

    Therefore folks, JNPR, Huawei or any other Nortel suitor would have to ask themselves the same questions today and under a harsher business climate. It would surprise this reader very much if anyone gives Mike Z. and his team a chance to sell Nortel. I believe Nortel’s management is faced with this reality and thus the reason why the time horizon for a makeover at Nortel is now lengthened to 3 to 5 years only to be readjusted again.

  • Casual Observer

    Nortel Watcher – your discounting the fact that Nortel never recovered between 2002 and 2005 like Cisco and Microsoft did before Mike Z was appointed CEO. He really didn’t have much to work with as his predecessors did next to nothing in order to improve the company’s future prospects. Nortel’s business was also too heavily reliant on optical and not diversified. That never really changed. The product portfolio was never altered much or even looked at until Mike Z came into the picture.

    I disagree about Nortel’s weak cabinet. They have the operational leadership in place in order to turn the company around and given George Reidel’s background at Juniper and McKinsey along with John Roese’s background, they are on the right track. I wouldn’t expect much revenue growth in a slowing economy as 2008 will be a challenging year the entire industry. Witness Cisco’s 25% drop in stock price the last couple of months. This year will be more about muddling thru similar to 2002.

  • http://deleted Nortel Watcher

    Cisco is buying back stock. By sharing his concerns about the enterprise market segment, Chambers created himself a nice discount. Watch the impact on EPS – and also share price – when results are announced.

    CO – I won’t debate the operational strength of the Nortel cabinet, but that doesn’t create something to sell. I think it’s too late to fix it now. Stock is down into the $13 range and heading in the wrong direction.

  • Bubba

    So far, Mike Z has succeeded in cutting 2/3 of the company value from the books, and eliminating the pension plan, which, while a dinosaur in this industry, was one of the few reasons left to stick around.

    For 2008, add “do something useful” to the to-do list.

    But I guess, since he’s now reading less emails, he won’t see this…

    b

  • Casual Observer

    wow..down almost another 5% today at 2x the average volume. Someone knows something.

  • nortel hand

    You got that right Casual Observer, the word is out nortel will miss 4Q by a wide margen. This is not good.

    Mark,
    What are you going to blog when Nortel finely goes the way of the dinosaur?

  • Mark Evans

    Nortel Hand:

    I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I’m sure there’s another company looking for someone to pay them a lot of attention. :)

  • moosebump

    casual -

    yes – someone knows something… US economy heading for (or already in) a recession.

    I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the tech market has been getting killed lately and NT is not the only one down. In fact, look at a chart of NT, ALU and ERIC in the last 3, 6 or 12 months and you’ll see that NT is actually outperforming.

  • Apple

    I think it’s all about Pension Plan and Nortel’s pension deficit of $2,9 bill /as of Dec 2005 number/

    Now the whole thing will sit on the balance sheet, increasing liabilities!!!!!
    For me it was obvious looong time ago that the pension deficit is the company liability.
    Let me say it in my words for those who still don’t get it.
    Under the old rules, only part of the pension deficit made it onto the balance sheet, while the full deficit was cited in accompanying notes.

    Investors are greeted with shock when they turn to the financial statements.?
    NT is falling down like a rock just to adjust to the new rules and new fundamental numbers.
    The effect is huge for some companies.
    With the new rule in place, Nortel Networks Corp.’s $2.9-billion pension deficit will cut 63% off shareholders’ equity as of Dec. 31, 2005.

    Mike Z changed the Pension Plan system. The new Plan does not give incentives same as the old one. It impacted employees so much that they quit the jobs and they look for a better companies with better benefits.
    more about the new rules here
    http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=ebcc9f34-bed5-4b4e-8217-171bbcefe0c9&k=13272
    Is it become a law? You tell me!
    and NT stock is reflecting all the fears of customers, employees, growing competition /Huawei, ZTE, CSCO, JNPR/ accounting fraud exposed by SEC /trials coming this year/ shrinking demand for telecom gears, consolidating customers, lack of profitability for years and USA recession on top of that!
    Why would someone want to hold NT stock in such environment is beyond my imagination!

    Good stocks will be good in 2008 and bad stocks like NT will be punished for being bad.
    You know how bad NT has been in last 5 years, don’t you?
    It’s my opinion only…

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