Value for Money: Executive Talent

Red Hat hires its new CEO from Delta Airlines. Wow...why go outside the tech industry? Partly because Jim Whitehurst will bring fresh ideas, partly because he knows how to run a lean operation (the way Delta has been the last few years) and partly because he is a closet geek. "He was running Fedora Core 6 and Fedora Core 7 at home. He was running Slackware at home and he was an experienced software developer..."

What was more interesting was this quote from the current CEO, Matthew Szulik on potential candidates from larger vendors ""When you take them out of the big buildings, without the imprimatur of Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle, or HP around them, they just didn't hold up."

He is confirming recent CIO Insight survey on the customer views on value for money from big tech vendors and those about innovation in the Booz Allen annual survey. The bigger vendor executives live in the high SG&A, high margin and low R&D world. They can move within that world, but have a harder time transitioning to disruptive vendors and their much more frugal sales structures and partner ecosystems.

Comments

[Anshu Sharma]

Vinnie,
Fresh blood in any industry is a positive sign but I am not sure that getting it at the very top is ideal. For one, it is much harder to manage a technology firm than an airline, avionics and automated check-ins notwithstanding. Or more correctly, its different. Just as a software executive that flies a jet (there are several!) is not qualified to run an airline, I would argue that running Linux servers at home is not a sufficient qualification to run an open source company.
Having said that this appointment may be right for several other reasons. Or may even be a NOOP. After all, there is scant evidence to show correlation (leave alone causal) between top executives and the performance of a company.
It may also be true that Red Hat may have had a hard time convincing seasoned executives from profitable firms to take on this role - or as is being articulated, they may not 'get it'. ;) Question is, are they not getting it or is Red Hat not getting something?

Just some thoughts. Not knowing the hired CEO, I have no reason to doubt his capabilities and I do wish him luck. I am sure he will have more fun doing this than trying to keep 1K/1M customers happy with their coffee or dealing with delays.