It looks John McHugh, VP, enterprise data solutions with Nortel’s enterprise business, looks to be getting his ducks lined for a new employer amid rumors the business could soon be sold to Avaya for $500-million.
In an interesting interview with Network World’s Tim Greene, McHugh suggests that Nortel should bring back the Bay Networks brand, which disappeared soon after Nortel purchased Bay for $9.1-billion at the peak of the telecom boom.
“The more independently I can run this business and take it back to its roots and make Bay Networks exist again, the more effective and focused we are going to be,” he said. “I would like Nortel to reincarnate Bay Networks.”
In what can only been be seen as a not-so-subtle criticism of Nortel’s senior management team, McHugh said part of the enterprise unit’s problems has been “the parent company doesn’t understand how important data networking equipment is from a customer perspective. There was a higher level strategic goal that we were peripheral participants in. We were a strategic afterthought.”
A bit of a digression but one thing that astounds me about the 'GE way', is the belief that one can run a business without any understanding of the actual business, either externally (the market and the company's position in it, etc) or internally (corporate cultural, core competencies, etc).
BB you've commented on Nortel's external challenges and the MikeZ and associates combination of arrogance and ignorance to them.
Nortel also had/has serious internal issues. Nortel's middle management (director/VP) have essentially no understanding of the external market.
They 'grew up' during the DMS heyday where external understanding was not required – customers/standard bodies simply told Nortel (NT) what to do, Nortel prioritized and did a subset. Managers were successful by their ability to influence and empire build in this context (rather like the old Soviet Gosplan I imagine). This culture continues to this day with middle managers still overwhelmingly focused on internal fief battle of no (or negative) customer value.
This needed to be addressed (somehow) if Nortel were to have had any chance continuing. But since emperor MikeZ surrounded himself with 'his' people, it was impossible for him to even be aware of this (not that he would have cared) never mind address this.
rfc1149
Thanks.
A bit of a digression but one thing that astounds me about the 'GE way', is the belief that one can run a business without any understanding of the actual business, either externally (the market and the company's position in it, etc) or internally (corporate cultural, core competencies, etc).
BB you've commented on Nortel's external challenges and the MikeZ and associates combination of arrogance and ignorance to them.
Nortel also had/has serious internal issues. Nortel's middle management (director/VP) have essentially no understanding of the external market.
They 'grew up' during the DMS heyday where external understanding was not required – customers/standard bodies simply told Nortel (NT) what to do, Nortel prioritized and did a subset. Managers were successful by their ability to influence and empire build in this context (rather like the old Soviet Gosplan I imagine). This culture continues to this day with middle managers still overwhelmingly focused on internal fief battle of no (or negative) customer value.
This needed to be addressed (somehow) if Nortel were to have had any chance continuing. But since emperor MikeZ surrounded himself with 'his' people, it was impossible for him to even be aware of this (not that he would have cared) never mind address this.
Let’s Resurrect Bay Networks
It looks John McHugh, VP, enterprise data solutions with Nortel’s enterprise business, looks to be getting his ducks lined for a new employer amid rumors the business could soon be sold to Avaya for $500-million.
In an interesting interview with Network World’s Tim Greene, McHugh suggests that Nortel should bring back the Bay Networks brand, which disappeared soon after Nortel purchased Bay for $9.1-billion at the peak of the telecom boom.
“The more independently I can run this business and take it back to its roots and make Bay Networks exist again, the more effective and focused we are going to be,” he said. “I would like Nortel to reincarnate Bay Networks.”
In what can only been be seen as a not-so-subtle criticism of Nortel’s senior management team, McHugh said part of the enterprise unit’s problems has been “the parent company doesn’t understand how important data networking equipment is from a customer perspective. There was a higher level strategic goal that we were peripheral participants in. We were a strategic afterthought.”
McHugh was hired by Nortel a year ago after 26 years with Hewlett-Packard,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/063009-nortel-bay-mchugh.html