This interview was pitched as a rare opportunity to meet a high-profile technology CEO. How accessible are you to your employees and customers?
I don’t consider myself the CEO of Symbol. I consider myself an associate in the company. I don't think I carry myself as the CEO. I'm a pretty regular person.
I would love to spend more time with customers and I will, now that we’ve become more external in our focus given the turnaround. I probably spend 30 percent of my time with customers today, but I'd like that to be 50 percent. And I spend probably 80 percent of my time with my associates. I'm rarely behind closed doors in my office at all. I'm a very hands-on leader, not a micro manager, although some may disagree.
You have been described as a hands-on operator, marketing savvy and with unflagging energy. Now, where does that energy come from?
[Laughs] It comes from a passion for my work and my passion for the vision of the company. I genuinely believe in our company, vision and people. If you dig deep under the covers, it also comes from a great driver of very successful people--the fear of failure.
Your regular interactive meetings with top executives allow you to instill a learning culture at Symbol--how successful is that?
It’s working well. Symbol is very much a start-up. It is almost newly founded because of such substantial changes in the company. There has to be consistent interactive communication on a global basis, so that one, people understand where you are going and how you intend to get there, and two, you listen carefully to what the challenges are in achieving those goals.
Making customer satisfaction as part of employee compensation--how did your staff react to that? Customer satisfaction and yearly performance are part of the bonus structure for everyone in the company. It's 25 percent of my yearly bonus, and that's not small.
When all is said and done, we put the money where our mouth is and not many companies do that. It's only when you make it part of your employees' compensation that you will get the focus and attention you need on customer satisfaction.
In the past year, our customer satisfaction has gone up. In 2003, our customer satisfaction rating was 3.51 out of 5, and in 2004, it was 3.81 which is a fairly healthy jump year-on-year. Every year we dive deeply into the customer satisfaction survey results and come up with plans to address the top three to five functions that will improve customer satisfaction. We chart that throughout the year, measure our progress against that, and rerun the survey to see if we've improved.
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