Ex-IBMers Finding Success at Motorola

Yesterday, Motorola announced that Stu Reed and Rita Lane were being promoted to president of Motorola's Mobile Devices business and the lead of the Integrated Supply Chain organization, respectively. Both of them are former IBMers and while I never had the chance to work with Rita, I did have the opportunity to work on several projects with Stu. His wit, humor and intelligence are part of the key's to his success and it's great to see that he is succeeding at Motorola a company that is in need of a turnaround, much like the one Stu was involved in at IBM in the early 90's. Which is also probably one of the reasons Ed Zaner, CEO, Motorola wanted him in the first place more than two years ago.

It's particularly satisfying for me as a communications professional to see Stu's use, via his PR team, of some of the IBM messages in the announcement. For example, Greg Brown's quote reads, " Stu has established our global supply chain organization and transformed it into a competitive advantage." That's a compelling statement, that many businesses today are still struggling with today and one that we also promoted heavily during our own supply chain transformation. I wish them both continued success.