re: Tellabs Names Prabhu as New CEOHow would the industry, and his employees, rate his stint with Alcatel?
Here is an overview from the outside based more on observation than direct contact. They are constructed as general observations of alcatel USA rather than any single person.
0) Alcatel USA has in large measure collapsed. Most of the acquisitions (DSC/Packet Engines /Xlyan) have ended badly. Alcatel USA was also involved in a very unusual number of lawsuits.
1) There were problems in the leadership of Alcatel USA. An unusual number of second-level leaders ended up leaving the company in bitter circumstances. And in some cases with lawsuits involved. Anyone interested in more detail should look at the public information associated with the cisco/alcatel lawsuit. Or the public comments of Bernard Danes after he left packet engines.
2) There was a tendancy at the top to take business very personally.
3) There was a tendancy to make what should have been technology decisions based on gut instinct which invariably led to bad decisions being made. This was particularly true of acqusitions.
4) Trust was placed in the wrong people and often they got completely out of control before it was noticed. Put another way, if you were trusted, you could get away with almost anything before there would be any intervention.
5) Sometimes an impossible will be set and given it to someone. That person has a choice of either trying (and probably failing) to do the impossible task or to tell the truth and suffer the consequences. A hypothetical example would be promoting someone to a very senior job and then telling them that the division has huge financial problems which either require gutting the organization or selling unrealistic amounts.
6) Tough and ruthless people were greatly respected. Weakness (like caring about people or moral questions about actions) didn't go over very well to put it mildly.
How would an outsider rate alcatel USA?
- Nearly every acquisition made during the period collapsed. Alcatel's attempts to get a foothold in north america and a foothold in internet technology both were massive failures.
- The core businesses of alcatel in telecom (pre-acqusitions) also decayed. But how much this was due to american leadership and how much was due to pressure to shed americans to protect european jobs is something only the top person would have known.
- Along the same lines, its never easy to know what a particular person was responsible for vs. how much of it involved strings being pulled in Paris.
re: Tellabs Names Prabhu as New CEOKP will crush Gary Smith and the rest of the Nortel alumni. Time to short ALA, CIEN, NT, LU.
Excellent choice for TLAB. This guy made ALA happen in the US and it's never been the same since he left. Yeah, he isn't perfect, who is, but given a US based, large company with lots of cash, this guy will wreak havoc.
re: Tellabs Names Prabhu as New CEOKP will fail at the day-to-day cost cutting required at Tellabs and McCarthy has already proven inept at that task, so KP will bring a hatchet man from Alcatel.
KP is not good at running a steady business, he failed at Alcatel on leveraging the Rockwell SONET success, he is really good at spinning new strategies and Wall Street likes him.
Brace for M&A, KP is too smart not to realize that Tellabs is on a slow death spiral... and SONET will not save them. Vivace came too late and is too small anyway.
re: Tellabs Names Prabhu as New CEOI agree that he will create havok, but I dont see havok as being in tellabs best interests.
And his judgement with acqusitions is really bad. I can see him rushing out to buy Caspian or riverstone without even looking at at what he is getting. He would go for Caspian, if for no other reason, than to prove to his former VC partners what a great investment it was.
He can crush the hangers-on at Tellabs, but he has his own set of people who are as bad or worse. The only experience those people have is in EOL, cutting budgets and shutting down an entire organization in an endless series of layoffs.
Also, they have donuts at Monday meetings!!! ;-)