Poll: Rating Mike Z.’s Leadership Skills

By Mark Evans | Published: January 29, 2009

It’s been a while since we did a poll, so today’s question is how you rate CEO Mike Zafirovski’s leadership skills.

If you want to provide some elaboration, leave a comment but let’s keep it constructive rather than a flame-fest. OK?


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  • less

    Ah, the good lold days, when the Internet was only flooded by global warming.

  • less

    Put the power in the hands of the masses, eh. The same masses that are still trapped in the blame game on Mr. Zero Man. How many of them can look at a big picture what the root cause is?

    How many masses are out there?

  • exnt2

    JCI4s are demoted to do a senior designer job with no pay cut. same with JCI5 and 6 going down a few levels to join peers who make half the money.

    no pay cuts. these people ought to be booted out and let some of the people thrive, some who have not seen a promotion in over 5 years.

  • NortelSouth

    I insist. Mike Z is the unknown twin of Jack McAllister of “Fun with Dick and Jane” mastered play by Allec Baldwin…

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369441/

  • NortelSouth

    May be we have lucky and Dogbert buys the company and do the same with Mike Z

    http://www.dilbert.com/

  • MyHeadHurts

    In other real high-tech companies, if you change jobs to a lower pay grade, or are forced down (due to a number of issues) your pay gets cut to the classification of the job.

    It's called “at risk” pay. Meaning, the higher you move up the chain, more is expected of you, you need to take more smart risk and you should be rewarded accordingly. You fail or get moved down, it's your loss. It's the motivation to keep your job and perform better. It rewards the guys who have ambition and talent, and punishes those hanger-on-ers to go elsewhere or improve.

  • exnt2

    er this is NT so the less you know and the less you do the higher you go. if you are found out then you are moved to a less-er job still knowing less and doing less. the only thing is salary which is in direct reverse proportion to how much you know and do.

    no NT CEO has had the guts or brains to get this culture out of NT. prior to leaving 3 JCI6's were moved into our team reporting to a JCI6 and having JCI5 peers who also got moved in earlier, JCI4 and JCI3 peers. I know of others who had JCI5s moved into teams managed by a JCI4 with JCI3 peers.

  • Another_Nortel_Watcher

    Funny. And just like Blago, Mike Z is probably encouraging Hackney with words like “Don't despair, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Mandella had to face these challenges too.”

  • broadbandbill

    80% of the voters agree with you; TERRIBLE!!!!..-bb

  • NTdown

    I just want to say,Six Sigma means only 3-4 mistakes are allowed in 1 MILLION opportunities, how many mistakes did Mike Z make? Thousands of… If we don't own the factory, 6 sigma is nothing but really garbage.

    Just ask our customers, how do they think the current product qaulity and COE technical capabilty, they will tell u , DISASTER

  • ExNtrl

    I hear about how people here can do a better job of running the company then the GE boys (probably true). Here is a suggestion: how about putting together an employee buyout of the business total or business unit and then turn the situation/business around?

  • forgive

    Regarding pay cut, I am very surprised to see so many ex-employees or current employees object it.

    AMD is one of the only 2 players in CPU market, it recently announced big pay cut from top management team way down to normal employees. Remember there are only 2 players in big CPU market. With such move, I believe AMD will come out of economic downturn very soon. Many local high tech companies also use pay cut, compensation cut to survive.

    Why not Nortel do this earlier? Look at Telecom equipment market, please count how many competitors there are? Could any JCI/4/56 guy standing out now to justify whether your pay check matches with what you contributed? Zero Man actualy had chance to lead a dramatic change 3 to 4 years ago. But he has no clue what the real Nortel problem is, and how to use the momentum of new leadership to break outdated HR and reward structure, and failed to let innovation rule.

  • slumdog

    Like the severance decision, the pay-cut proposal should have come from the leadership as it did at Western Digital and many others. It is evident from the month's events that the only thing Zero man and his cronies wanted is for their paychecks to keep coming; that too dug out of hapless employee severance and shareholder monies (which of course is history now).

    These crooks talk about ethics but in reality they have always owed fiduciary duties only to themselves. From what I have heard, Zero even took the corporate jet for his son's basketball game the day before the bankruptcy filing!! ..In the face of this, the ethics certification he mandated the employees pales into insignificance!

    Also, as I recall, at every town hall, they always affirmed the following statements
    1 There is no plan to make any changes to salary structure at this time
    2 There is no plan to change severance packages at this time.

    See where we are now !!

    I, a JCI3 would have been willing to take a pay cut if the leadership had even proposed it. I want to mention though that employees did toy with this idea on internal blogs but Z never cared enough to even read them.

    To add insult to injury we are being spammed by his Zmails every week now, trying to explain the decision to stop severance etc and how he understands what our families are going through. Save it Mr. Z !!

  • exnortel2

    i'd be up for that

  • exnortel2

    i'd be up for that

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