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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 its 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:
Patti Kane
Gumpert Communications
Tel. (781) 444-5543
Fax (781) 449-2128
pkane@gumpertcom.com
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