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Christopher Galvin, Motorola
CEO,
 Chosen
to Receive First Fuld "Intelligence" Award
Cambridge, MA (February 8, 2000)
Motorola Chairman and CEO Christopher B. Galvin has been chosen to receive
the 1999 Intelligence-Savvy CEO™ Award for Leadership in Competitive
Intelligence. In making the announcement, Leonard Fuld, president of Fuld
& Co., said, "This competitive intelligence award—the first of its
kind—validates the critical role that this business tool plays in
the boardrooms of Corporate America today."
After a year-long selection process, spear-headed by Fuld, president of
the leading competitive intelligence research and consulting firm Fuld
& Co., Galvin was selected to receive the award based on his open support
of competitive intelligence practices within Motorola, his encouragement
of the establishment of "intelligence standards" such as staff training
and ethical guidelines establishment, and his ear-marking of monies for
speeding the flow of critical competitive information.
Upon receiving the award, Galvin said, "Business intelligence gives us
the ability to be forewarned and to challenge our thinking about our market,
our competition, and upcoming events." Galvin attributes many of Motorola's
successes to competitive intelligence during his tenure, saying, "The
reorganization of the (entire Motorola communications) enterprise was
partly aided by the intelligence effort, as is our selecting new partners,
such as Cisco...Tactically, we have many examples of market successes...we
learned that a number of rivals were interested in buying a company whose
technology we had a great deal of interest in. Knowing this, we decided
to buy this firm and the technology we felt was critical to our success
in this product category."
According to Fuld, the interest in competitive intelligence, especially
within the ranks of the Fortune 500, is growing. He predicts, "Now considered
a hot trend in Corporate America, competitive intelligence is quickly
becoming a required component of savvy management, taking its place alongside
other key management initiatives. While every corporate executive typically
states a need to understand its competition, few act on such statements.
Tomorrow's successful corporations will maintain competitive advantage
by taking action based on relevant information that has been strategically
analyzed."
An Intelligence Savvy CEO™ Award Advisory Board was formed in 1998
to conduct a comprehensive and in-depth review of more than 30 potential
candidates gleaned from more than 3,000 award ballots and hundreds of
interviews. In addition to Leonard Fuld, the Board is comprised of other
competitive intelligence "gurus" including the Academy of Competitive
Intelligence (ACI) founder and president Benjamin Gilad, ACI co-founder
Jan Herring, and Ava Harth Youngblood, former president of the Society
of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. Selection for the next Intelligence
Savvy CEO™ Award is now underway. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Fuld
& Company specializes in providing research and analysis to the financial
services, utility/energy, manufacturing, high technology, telecommunications,
healthcare and consumer product sectors. Leonard Fuld is a worldwide recognized
expert and author in the field of competitive intelligence.
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"What Do You Know and How Do
You Know It?"
Christopher Galvin, Chairman and CEO Motorola
Chris Galvin benefited from not only a legacy of learning about business
and Motorola from his father, Bob Galvin, but also a respect and appreciation
for the need for timely, decisive competitive intelligence. Chris Galvin
has met all of the three criteria established for an intelligence-savvy
CEO in exemplary fashion. He openly and vocally supports the effort. He
has encouraged and provided funding for widespread hiring of professional
business intelligence analysts throughout Motorola's business units. He
involves the intelligence team in all major corporate decisions, and he
is constantly improving on the professional standards to which Motorola
must adhere to grow and manage the function within the company. These standards
include training, formulating and reinforcing ethical and legal guidelines,
and increasing the sophistication of communications technology to speed
the flow of critical intelligence to management.
Indications of Chris Galvin's support of and direct involvement in Motorola's
competitive intelligence process are many. We gleaned the following from
interviews conducted with Chris Galvin himself, his managers, and others
outside the company:
- Motorola's intelligence group is charged with helping management anticipate
both competitive threats and market opportunities. The intelligence team
is also encouraged by Mr. Galvin to challenge his thinking.
- Whenever Chris Galvin is confronted with a strategic problem or a new
competitive issue, the central question he always asks (and encourages others
on his team to ask) is, "What does our intelligence team know about the
issue?" Motorola's recent complex reorganization was completed with an analysis
provided to management by the intelligence team.
- The intelligence organization played a key role in forming a number of
key alliances and joint ventures for Motorola. In at least one recent instance,
based on the intelligence organization's assessment, Motorola's management
used the advice it received from the intelligence group to take a large
stake in a supplier company in order to strategically thwart any interested
rival's ability to buy this firm.
- Mr. Galvin's weekly market briefing to more than 100,000 individuals throughout
the company includes input from the intelligence team.
- The intelligence groups within Motorola's business units have grown rapidly
in the past three years. The corporate intelligence group manages the relationship
among the various business unit teams. Essentially, the growth of business
intelligence within Motorola is the result of a grass-roots effort formed
into pockets of excellence, with open encouragement from the top.
- Mr. Galvin, a computer-literate CEO, constantly taps into his e-mail.
His managers all attest to his quick feedback on any piece of critical intelligence.
… "Are we all seeing the same mental videotape?" is a frequently heard expression
from Mr. Galvin during reviews that he has with business unit leaders during
their planning sessions. He has set in place a rigorous process to review
all information presented during business planning meetings, with a strong
intelligence element built into each session.
- He has encouraged the "minority report" approach to allow anyone with
alternate or minority opinions to express those opinions. While he looks
for consensus, he uses the minority report approach to encourage new, fresh
intelligence into management decision making. Even as the program is still
unfolding, Mr. Galvin encourages contrarian intelligence views, which have
contributed to and changed Motorola's position in the past.
- Mr. Galvin has also made sure that his firm's sales force has tied itself
into the corporate intelligence network. He cited as evidence one instance
where detailed analysis of a rival's bid allowed Motorola enough time to
restructure the bid and win its order. In another instance, the intelligence
group learned of a customer's dissatisfaction of which the sales force
was unaware. The intelligence group presented its findings to the sales
organization in time to turn around the account.
- He has ensured that Motorola maintains and educates its organization with
a clear set of legal and ethical business intelligence guidelines. The guidelines
include the rules surrounding both the gathering and the protecting of critical
information. The intelligence group conducts training of both the intelligence
professionals as well as managers who are in sales, product development,
and numerous other, non-intelligence jobs. Because Motorola is very much
involved in the international marketplace, Mr. Galvin has driven the company
to review its cultural as well as ethical and legal information-gathering
guidelines.
- Motorola is developing a career path for those who want to pursue intelligence
as a profession. Mr. Galvin observed that, in the past, those who started
out in a competitive intelligence role often transferred out to another,
non-intelligence position within Motorola after only a few years. As a result,
Motorola had constantly lost the benefit of the experience each individual
had gained during those years. With the encouragement and guidance of its
intelligence team, Motorola is creating an industry-leading career path
in the field of competitive intelligence. The company has seen the numbers
of employees involved in intelligence increase dramatically.
Interview with Christopher B. Galvin
"I see business intelligence giving us the ability to be forewarned and
to challenge our thinking about our market, our competition, and upcoming
events."
Question: Your director of Business Intelligence (BI), among others
who know you, state that you openly endorse the use of intelligence at Motorola.
Can you give me examples? Do you speak publicly about the process and encourage
those in Motorola to promote the use of intelligence? In what other ways
do you feel you promote the effort? What do you do to encourage other Motorola
managers to use BI?
Answer: My philosophy for intelligence: There are a variety of utilities
and benefits to the intelligence activity that my father learned from an
intelligence advisory board. The first among these lessons is the general
statement: "With the exception of the surprise that comes through invention
and innovation, we don't like to be surprised." One of the many contributions
that Warren Holtsberg and his business intelligence team make is to keep
the feelers out there to give us the forewarning. This forewarning is particularly
important in the research and development area. We want to know what is
changing, who might be trying to gain an advantage. I see business intelligence
giving us the ability to be forewarned and to challenge our thinking about
our market, our competition, and upcoming events.
The second aspect or benefit of intelligence is the studious, objective,
and analytical input that comes from this effort. Some of the underlying
reasons that we have changed our corporate strategy to meet customers' total
enterprise solutions are because of the analysis that Warren and his team
have delivered. They have allowed us to observe how our competitors and
others in our industries look at their customers. This group has alerted
us to any new business models used by our rivals. In short, the intelligence
group has led us to that conclusion, the conclusion to move toward the business
model that offers total solutions for our customers.
A third reason I promote, and have witnessed the benefits of an internal
BI program, has to do with objectivity. Analysts on the outside, outside
of Motorola, can discuss pricing, but our internal analysts can develop
pricing and cost structures from our perspective, assessing it from our
vantage point, objectively and in great depth.
Fourth, one can get a fair amount of advice from outsiders, such as investment
bankers and others who have interest in selling, or who have their own interests,
not always aligned with ours. Our business intelligence group of analysts
is entrusted to do an analysis that has no stakes involved ... we rely on
the team for these decision-making elements.
Question: How would you describe your personal interest in business
intelligence at Motorola, and how it should be used throughout the organization?
Answer: I am very much involved and highly interested in how intelligence
can help our business. As it turns out, our business intelligence group
gets numerous requests from me for prospective assignments and for analysis.
Second, when someone sends me an e-mail or lets me know through a meeting
that he or she thinks something is going on ... about the third question
out of my mouth is, "What does our intelligence team know about it, or can
they find out about it?" This, again, is the fresh perspective we receive
[through a rigorous intelligence process].
It [the use of business intelligence] constantly gets reinforced.
Warren Holtsberg is the person who I would contact because he is on corporate
staff. Throughout the corporation there are intelligence people, including
in Europe, Hong Kong, Latin America, Silicon Valley. We have a web of market
analysts who are modeled after the corporate intelligence team. Senior managers
typically go to the [intelligence] managers in their team who are in their
locale. Warren is the organizer of the entire process.
Question: What business successes can you attribute to competitive
intelligence during your tenure as CEO, or as someone who was in charge
of a business unit within Motorola?
Answer: As we went through the strategic change and structural change
in the company ... a year ago, around solutions, we ended up using the work
that was done a year or two prior to that to change our approach to selling
and bundling our products and services. Our intelligence effort addressed
a number of critical questions that were instrumental in moving us toward
a solutions approach. They were: What are the structural changes? What standards
are critical to the industry at this time and in the near future? How are
customers being served in an enormously complicated telecom market? How
do other companies structure their solutions process?
The reorganization of the [entire Motorola communications] enterprise was
partly aided by the intelligence effort, as is our selecting new partners,
such as Cisco. On a regular basis, we incorporate the business intelligence
assessments relating to how industry standards might be established or changed,
how we can anticipate which standards will emerge, and the strategic moves
we need to make in order to maintain competitive advantage.
Tactically, we have many examples of market successes. For instance, we
learned that a number of rivals were interested in buying a company whose
technology we had a great deal of interest in. Knowing this, we decided
to buy a large stake in the company, thereby thwarting any rival's ability
to buy this firm and the technology we felt was critical to our success
in this product category.
In another case, we learned that our sales organization was unaware of the
depth of dissatisfaction inside a particular customer. Our business intelligence
group learned of the problem, examined it in greater depth, and presented
the findings before the customer started seeking an alternate supplier,
helping sales repair damage in time to turn around the account.
Question: Intelligence standards are an important part of any intelligence
organization. Standards include areas such as training and education, legal
and ethical guidelines, and access to leading-edge tools and technology.
Can you give me ways that Motorola has established these types of standards?
Answer: Generally, in virtually every talk or speech, our management
talks of making significant changes ... there are no dogmas that cannot
be changed. We maintain a strict set of ethical and legal guidelines that
start with broad rules and guidelines for overall business activity. Included
among these rules are rules of how you treat and gather intelligence ...
there are also rules for protecting sources and for only using honorable,
[legally available] sources.
One would not want to subject a corporation any corporation, not only
Motorola to one set of standards and the intelligence group to another.
These standards apply across the board.
Our intelligence group does conduct training sessions. The corporation,
as well, has an ethics and compliance process in every country.
There's a proper way to gather information, including the use of search
engines, the use of technology; there's only one way to do it that is
the public and honest way ....
The training extends far beyond information-gathering techniques ... it
extends beyond the people that have intelligence as a primary function ...
they [those in the organization who receive the ethics and compliance training]
might have as their primary function sales, technology ....
The intelligence group serves as quality control vehicle ... such that the
process is not only honest, but also productive and positive. For instance,
there are occasions that we cannot use the information we have come across
because it violates the standards.
The last couple of years, more than 300 people have been taking training
courses in intelligence practice, specifically.
We have begun to put into place a career management process for intelligence
[a career path for this profession within Motorola].
The ethics are reinforced in a very definitive compliance process throughout
the corporation. We have a process of "Ethics Renewal," especially in overseas
operations .... We have spent entire weekends taking the entire management
team to do this with ethics, morals, and culture.
We adapt to that culture. We have an open environment, where we invite discussion.
Such a process has practical repercussions for a company such as Motorola.
For instance, in the past there were times when we walked away from orders,
where we didn't have to [because we were too conservative, overlaying our
Western sense of cultural acceptance on another culture, and refused to
give that bottle of liquor, for example, thereby losing the account].
We have an ethics committee that will address ethical and legal issues in
each country. For instance, in the U.S., an expensive bottle of wine given
to a buyer would be considered undue influence. If we refused to give a
similar gift in Japan, we might be considered culturally insensitive thereby
losing the customer. What is proper in the U.S. may not be outside the U.S.
and vice versa. Our Ethics Renewal process, therefore, covers a broader
spectrum of issues and is very much individualized for the regions and the
countries in which Motorola does business.
Question: Would you say you have built on the intelligence process
that your father set in place over a decade ago at Motorola? How has your
approach differed with regard to staffing or reporting of intelligence?
Answer: The most significant difference is that the intelligence
activity is global and not just limited to the U.S., centered in Schaumburg.
Today we have staff everywhere, not just locally. Formerly, it was just
U.S., and everyone had to come back to headquarters.
Today, approximately 40% of our business is in the U.S. and nearly 60% is
outside the U.S.; the business is global and our global competitors are
very effective. It turns out other Scandinavians are the chief rivals. How
do you piece together their organization structures that could be very different
from ours [or from those of our Asia Pacific rivals]? Japan had opened our
eyes, in that regard.
The regulatory rules and trade rules and capital flow is significantly different
[than those of 10 or 15 years ago]. The companies we were looking at internationally
years ago were country-specific.
Question: What areas of CI would you like to improve throughout the
corporation in the next five years?
Answer: I think we have a pretty solid program today. But as we now
pursue our solution strategy, we will now require an enormous number of
market pieces to come together.
Three or four key issues we need to stay on top of, from an intelligence
perspective, are: … Comparing how we are organized will be helpful … Is
the substance of this constellation of partnerships we have formed working
and are others doing it better? … Anticipating and deciding on make-or-break
strategies or breakaway strategies … Is the business intelligence model
for anticipating these make-or-break strategies working?
There are other issues we need to address with regard to building our intelligence
organization within Motorola, including: … How we include intelligence whenever
we talk about strategy at Motorola … Getting an increasing number of people
trained in intelligence … Hiring and incorporating those from outside Motorola
into our culture … Since we are a more global company than ever before,
we need to orient our intelligence to focus on current and future partnerships
and customer solutions
The last issue, in my opinion, that we need to tackle has to do with response.
We must get people to respond to the input quickly. We have benchmarked
companies that have changed their organization every 15 days. We need to
be that responsive!
 Official
Biography
Christopher B. Galvin
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Motorola
Christopher B. Galvin began working at Motorola in summer jobs in 1967 and
joined the company full time in 1973. For the next decade, he held sales,
sales management, marketing management, and product management assignments
in the Communications Sector, the two-way radio business in that era.
In 1983, he joined Tegal Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Motorola and
manufacturer of plasma etching and stripping equipment for the semiconductor
industry, as vice president, marketing, sales and service. A year later
he was named vice president and general manager of Tegal's U.S. operations.
He became vice president and director of the Communications Sector's Paging
Division in Boynton Beach, Fla. in 1985, general manager of the division
in 1986, and a corporate vice president in 1987. He moved to senior vice
president and chief corporate staff officer in January 1988, and became
a member of the Policy and Operating Committees of the corporation. In May
1988, he was elected to the Board of Directors of Motorola, Inc. and elevated
to an executive vice president in May 1989.
In January 1990, he joined the office of the CEO as senior executive vice
president and assistant chief operating officer. He was elected president
and chief operating officer in December 1993, and chief executive officer
in January 1997. He assumed the office of chairman of the board of directors
in June 1999.
Galvin received a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University, Evanston,
Ill., and a master's degree with distinction from the Kellogg Graduate School
of Management at Northwestern. He is a director of the Rand Corporation
and the Illinois Coalition for science and technology, a trustee of Northwestern
University and the American Enterprise Institute, and a member of the Advisory
Board of the American Society for Engineering Education. He is also a member
of the National Advisory Board for the National Underground Railroad Freedom
Center.
A
Legacy of Business Intelligence at Motorola
Bob Galvin is widely recognized as the first chief executive officer (CEO)
to realize that multinational corporations like their government counterparts
need their own intelligence program if they are to operate and compete
successfully around the world. His experience with both competitors and
partners during the late 1970s and early 1980s convinced him of this new
business imperative. Furthermore, one rather unique experience led him to
conclude that such business intelligence endeavors should be run by a small
cadre of professionals;this was not something to be left to amateurs or
part-timers. Mr. Galvin had served on the U.S. President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board (PFIAB) and had been given a unique look at how intelligence
is both produced and used by government officials to make difficult decisions.
In fact, Mr. Galvin actually led one of the major intelligence estimates
on the Soviet security threat; this, in turn, instilled in him the respect
for professionalism in both intelligence collection and analysis. These
experiences, combined with his company's future competitive challenges,
caused Mr. Galvin to act on his conviction that business intelligence is
both a legitimate and necessary activity for multinational companies.
Motorola formally established its BI program in 1982. And, after an extensive
search for an intelligence professional to develop and run the program,
they chose a seasoned intelligence officer and manager from the Central
Intelligence Agency. Bob Galvin worked closely with his new director of
intelligence to create the professional cadre he so strongly believed in.
Together they developed the analytical capability needed to assess both
the current and future competitive situations Motorola would have to face.
A professional intelligence collection network was established to monitor
the total competitive environment that Motorola's businesses operated in
worldwide. The intelligence Early Warning function, leveraging the human-source
collection network, soon became operational to prevent the company from
being surprised by its international competitors. And, underpinning all
of this was the development and implementation of a formal set of legal
and ethical guidelines for the business intelligence operation, with a corporate
lawyer assigned to provide advice and counsel on an ongoing basis. In three
years, Motorola's business intelligence program became fully operational,
supporting both corporate management and business divisions. Mr. Galvin
and his senior management team used the resulting intelligence in a wide
variety of business activities, from formulating new strategies to making
difficult business decisions, such as the decision to fully enter the China
market. In addition, the intelligence program was instrumental in successfully
negotiating a number of major alliances and several key acquisitions. Equally
important, with Bob's encouragement, the business divisions began to set
up and operate their own business intelligence units. He strongly believed
that the company's business managers, not just the executive team, should
use the intelligence produced by the intelligence organization. This wider
use of BI throughout Motorola would take another five to ten years to achieve
and required the continued support and leadership of the company's senior
management.
Bob Galvin's intelligence legacy at Motorola is strong and alive. It has
also found its way into the business world at large. Companies around the
world today recognize the need for business intelligence and many have adopted
the Motorola model and its professional way of launching and managing intelligence
systems. For his global leadership, the Society of Competitive Intelligence
Professionals awarded Bob its Meritorious Award in 1997.
For further information about the Award, contact:
Sarah Gerrol, (617)
523-4141
sarah@morrisseyco.com
Morrisey & Co.
121 Mount Vernon Street
Boston, MA 02108 |
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