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    John Roese’s Legacy?

    By Mark Evans | November 12, 2008

    John Roese
    The Globe& Mail has an interesting article looking at the departure of Nortel chief technology officer John Roese, who was let go earlier week along with three other senior executives.

    What’s been interesting is that over the past two years, Roese has been probably been the executive under the most scrutiny and fire - more so than CEO Mike Zafirovski, who was supposed to establish a new vision for Nortel; more so than Joel Hackney, who was promoted after an ugly assault incident during a parking lot dispute; more so than George Riedl, an M&A specialist who was lured away from Juniper but who has only made a few minor deals.

    It may have had to do with the fact Roese was front and centre. He seemed to like the spotlight, happily talked to the media, and was a fairly keen blogger. While it was good for Roese to be out there, it also put him in the crosshairs for people unhappy about Nortel’s strategic direction.

    When Roese was hired in 2006, it was seen as a strange move because he wasn’t promoted from within Nortel, and that he wasn’t a pure telecom person. As well, he came to Nortel after a very short stint with Broadcom Corp., following a long career at Enterasys.

    In the press release issued by Nortel, Roese was described as a “respected industry visionary and recognized authority on network convergence and emerging technologies, will be responsible for the Company’s overall R&D strategy and execution, directing future research across all product portfolios. In addition, he will work closely with the Chief Strategy Officer on emerging technologies, market opportunities and strategic partnerships.”

    Roese’s biggest challenge over the past two years may have been that Nortel is still focused on a variety of markets and products, and it still doesn’t seem to be completely strategically committed. Case in point is the metro Ethernet network business, which Nortel is trying to dump even though it appears to be the crown jewel.

    It may have been that Roese didn’t stand much of a chance of being successful given the cards he was dealt. However you want to assess his performance as Nortel’s CTO, Roese is a good guy with lots of experience and he’ll hopefully land in a new position where he has can do well.

    For more, check out the Wall St. Journal’s blog, which looked at the four Nortel executives who were let go. Roese’s also wrote a final blog post. The Financial Post also has a story on Roese’s time at Nortel.

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    Topics: Executive Suite |

    Viewing 31 Comments

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      John Roese was never a fit for a CTO.
      His legacy is that he part of a failing team. John Roese loved to hear his own voice. It was a real challenge for anyone to communicate an idea with him as he just does not stop talking. This attributes of his was a joke among Nortel Execs in public internal GISs.

      His other trouble is that he was visibly immature once it comes to tools and games. While there is nothing wrong about Secondlife, you can not build a company strategy around it.

      He is not the one who introduced PBT (neither is Morin the big politician), all what he did was noticing it, then pushing it as there is nothing else he can introduce.

      He started to build an irrelavent empire of large Project management team with more than a 100 people it led by another politician who have no clue about product development. He kick started a S/W process review which was forced on all team regardeless of their market (forced the same pocess on enterprise and carrier) and wasted the time of hunders of senior people re-writing these processes which no one wanted, and no one understood it.

      He is not a good fit for a CTO, never been and too bad he is taking more money from Nortel as he leaves. He is the worst CTO nortel had.
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      Roese's legacy of roaring success in PBT, IMS, and WiMax by Nortel will dearly be missed.
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      • v
      ha .........part deux.
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      JR never had a chance. He made specific recommendations on strategy and execution, but Mike Z your CEO did not have the backbone to do the right thing. MikeZ brought in new blood but never got rid of the old. The old blood learned how to be "Yes Mans" and MikeZ does not have a clue. Now that the new blood is gone and the old blood which represents the worst of the old corrupted Nortel is back. They are attacking on this board. And worst they are back in charge at Nortel and doing the worst things possible for their own benefits. They will enjoy a few more months of being in charge, but they don't have a clue that they are sinking the boat with their actions.

      That's what happened when you hire a clueness CEO with no backbone, no guts. The only thing he knows is to Lean Six Sigma out of trouble.

      PH
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      PH,

      He had plenty of chances and screwed them all. For info, strategy suggestions were not his call. He correctly identified that software (and lack of a comprehensive software architecture) was a big hole at NT but did nothing about it even though he was presented with one hell of a blueprint. It wasn’t HIS blueprint.

      He then got on the WiMax soapbox (not having ANY background in the subject) and single-handedly decided to choose the technology behind it before the market did (for clarification, it is always the market that decides the technology; see the early DSL line coding wars; Betamax vs VHS; IP vs SNA; IP vs. OSI: etc., etc., etc.).

      And, for a while, JR was Mike Z’s golden boy with carte blanche authority, which he pissed away, even upstaging the CSO; the very person that got him there. He then made a couple of acquisitions, one of which was to help an old comrade (Mads Lilelund at Bluesocket).

      Should I continue? As I said before JR and Ms. Flaherty are the best (read: worst) examples of what’s wrong with Corporate America; resumes that talk-the-talk but are total invalids when asked to walk-the-walk.

      Enough of JR; let’s move onto more important and urgent matters such as: Will Jose Murinho be back at Inter Milan next year?

      Cheers,

      bb
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      Sounds like we have a dissenter. Better call in a black belt ninja superstar to resolve this with some kung-fu process-driven resolution skills!
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      ha..............................................
      To the tune of kung fu fighting.

      All the blackbelts were severance whining
      Those cats were fat as whitening
      In fact it was a little bit frightening
      Those cats had bonus timing
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      Roese seemed more interested in empire building and global processes than actual products.
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      Don't forget the toastmasters, GIS's and jet setting.
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      Seriously, Mark..Do you believe in what you wrote ??!!
      This is the man who made the statement "There are only two kinds of people at Nortel; Sales and sales support"
      What does this guy know about research ?? The R&D section never existed. It was all development and no Research. The think tanks or so they wish to call themselves had absolutely no vision of what the future would be like. They have no real product or even research that has the oomph factor. John Roese did not really contribute to any research. It is evident from the real sucky web.alive project . There was such a hoopla about it..they bought Diamondware..they had n number of press releases. But what is the value proposition...NOTHING !!
      Nothing worth 10 million dollars they spent acquiring the company.
      Sorry Mark..John Roese was not really a visionary as we all thought him to be..just another opportunist who made his millions !
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      web.alive never made sense except to those directly involved in its development. They deluded themselves to the point that they believed web.alive was going to be "the next greatest thing". Similar to how Roese himself was deluded enough to believe was a visionary and spiritual leader... hmm... does that remind you of anyone?
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      "Roese is a good guy with lots of experience..."

      I'm a good guy with 20+ years of experience in Telecomm. Can I be a CTO, too?
      • ^
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      The link to WSJ is broken
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      My bad - link now fixed.

      Mark
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      bb

      I think your frustration with Roese is more an artifact of nortel senior management's low regard for the CTO position in general. Look to the past series of empty suits that had the job before Roese. BNR used to have a strong CTO, with vision and direction but when nortel took over they eviscerated the position.

      Roese might not have been the best CTO in the world, but the CTO position at nortel is not a sought after job.

      All in all I think Roese did the best he could with the influence, background and support he had.
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      Many,

      Beg to differ. No doubt my frustration with NT management and their lack of articulation of vision is pretty obvious; no one has articulated what Nortel’s vision is (‘Business Made Simple’ does not qualify).

      My frustration with Roese is that he did NOT ask for help, especially in areas where he had no experience (wireless and telecom). What he had were highly unqualified opinions and complete lack of market awareness (as well the required technology for those markets).

      Offering 4G without a strategy to include femtocels; making a technology choice for WiMax (MIMO-only) without the market having a voice in such choices; not being a player in Wi-Fi (note AT&T acquisition of Wayport for $250M); not willing to visit one of the best high-speed R&D shops to ever come out of Cal-Tech; I can go on and on and on. He thought he knew it all and wasted no time telling everyone he knew it all, not realizing he was only disclosing just how ignorant he was (and still is). Does he know his stuff in the enterprise market and VoIP? Yes, but not enough to cover for his exposure in the other areas.

      Net-net; he gained a lot more than Nortel did during his tenure; he increased his visibility ten-fold. Relatively speaking, he was a nobody before he got tapped; let’s see what he does as an encore…

      bb
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      bb,

      Obviously you have met the man and have history with him. You know detail I do not. I think he knew his stuff in wi-fi and I agree the femtocell was a serious miss, but to have played in femtocell they needed a wireless product to begin with :)

      I also agree time will tell. Having been at nortel through the 90's and also having worked for BNR for more than 20 years prior to that, I know what a good technical vision is and what boneheads were in the CTO chair in the later years. Although he was relatively unknown I thought at least he spoke up and communicated, I have seen nortel do far worse.

      Anyway the encore will be interesting
      • ^
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      Many,

      Yes, I did meet with JR; yet another insecure exec more concerned with territoriality than getting things done. I also disagree with your comment ‘he knew his stuff in wi-fi’; where? What did he do in Wi-Fi outside what he read in the trade/tech pubs.

      As for ‘speaking up’ that had more to do with him than Nortel and Nortel is the worse for it. Have you any idea what the CTOs of the major global carriers think of him? You will find out by how long the line is to hire him. My guess: he’ll end up at MSFT, IBM maybe even Alcatel but NOT Avaya; Charlie does not hire flunkies….--bb
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      I based my comment on his work with the IEEE and IETF on wireless security at enterasys:
      http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_...

      I work for the CTO office of a major global carrier and I not heard that he is thought of badly. At least that is not the information I have. Not that they think especially highly of him either.
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      Good dialog. Let me add an additional point for consideration: who was JR able to attract to strengthen Nortel's bench strength? My research only comes up with two names, both junior managers. One is in charge of Web.Alive and the other was described to me as 'John's PA'. wow. How underwhelming.

      My impression is that John was an intelligent engineer. WAY out of his depth in Nortel and unprepared to lead an organization larger than a half dozen junior people.
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      I have trouble coming to the defense of anyone in a "leadership" role at nortel. I do not know Roese, never met the man. I just traded some posts on his blog, which I give him credit for having at all. Overall bb is right, nortel suffered badly from lack of vision, strategy and the tactics that support that strategy and John Roese was a part of that failure, but IMO not the direct cause.
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      Roese hyped the "hyperconnectivity" line, that Nortel COULD BE all things to all people because it had all the disparate pieces to deliver a hyperconnected future.

      What exactly did he contribute to Nortel being actually able to deliver that future? Not much.
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      The nicest thing the thinkers could say about him is that John Roese is an American, and as such, never knew the culture.
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      Sorry Mark, you got this one very wrong!

      Roese was/is nothing more than an opportunist. His ‘biggest challenge’ wasn’t the fact ‘Nortel was focused on a variety of markets and products’ (a fact he knew prior to accepting the position) but the fact he was CLUELESS about those very markets (see below).

      “A CTO needs to be an informed and well-rounded Evangelist, which he is not (due to his lack of both Wireless and Telecom experience). He’s also too hardware-centric and talks-the-talk but hasn’t walked-the-walk on software. His insistence on MIMO-only WiMax may have potentially cost Nortel billions in revenues. That is exactly what happens when the uninitiated rule.” -- AAN post by BB; Posted on September 2, 2008.

      It was not the cards that were ‘dealt to Roese’ but the fact he should have never been seated at the table; a formerly small time (rookie) player playing on the world’s stage without any real foundation. Previously, Roese only worked for one company, had no Nortel-relevant experience and was NOT a good guy. He used Nortel to increase his own industry visibility as a “visionary”. In two years, he created ZERO software architecture and never engaged in a real debate about any of his initiatives. Two months ago I stated that his days were numbered; I can smell empty (and opportunistic) suits a mile away.

      Perhaps he can rename his virtual reality project WEB.DEAD; Good riddance!!!!!

      bb
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      Agreed. The only thing good about Roese was his demise, and hopefully, the demise of web.alive.and.a.waste.of.money.
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      ...and informal analyst reaction at VoiceCon has been "glad to see him go."
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      Roese is a lightweight blowhard with no telecom experience. Wrong guy for the Nortel job.
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      Probably because his differences with Joel made him believe we could be assaulted so he decided not to get punched in the face...

      Seriously, John never had the chance to make this work as the R&D is controlled by the business units, having so little power forced this outcome. Remember that Web.alive was incubated in his team.... now it will be killed as it "doesnt bring revenue soon enough"
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      You've got to be kidding. Do you really think web.alive will bring in any revenue, much less measurably turn a profit?
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      no revenue.... just a good toy
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      I agree that as a CTO you need to be pursuing new technologies but those efforts have to result in product that can conceivable make money. Web.alive does not fit that profile and furthermore it is/was completely outside the scope of Nortel.

      So in that respect we're in agreement.
     
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