Mike Capellas - only the hyper thrive

Ever been to a fast paced movie that left you exhausted or a book you could not put down and left you similarly drained? I felt that after LISTENING to Capellas, CEO of MCI present at Sapphire today in Boston. In fact, on several occasions his words kept trailing off, as his mouth tried to keep up with his thoughts. And this was a post lunch speaking slot.

I expected him to primarily talk about the recent Verizon and Qwest bid for MCI – he spent a minute at the end of his Q&A on that. The rest of the time was spent on the exciting times on the business (not consumer/content) side of telecommunications – why private networks are growing in the face of the increasingly attacked public internet, the excitement around WIMAX, the growth of global connectivity. I doubt I have seen anyone from the telecommunication sector make the business side sound so exciting.

He then described their SAP project as part of their accounting clean up (roll back of detailed accounting of a number of subsidiaries going back several years). As we have read in the media they needed more than a routine scrub. This was not your garden variety fast implementation or let’s make sure we are SOX compliant – the master data and clean up issues sounded like a root canal, especially since the regulators had threatened them with a specific shut down deadline.

And then, as part of his day job he has been discussing with his board for the last few months the competing bids from Verizon and Qwest?

A few years ago, I had heard Compaq’s CIO describe the IT integration project when HP had acquired them. It sounded like another very well executed, rapid exercise. Guess what, Capellas was around that one too.

Hey, may be more former CIOs like him should be allowed to become CEOs. If they are organized, fast paced, and know how to judiciously apply technology they could revolutionize a number of other companies.