Excerpts: Herbert Wertheim Lecture (4-14-2000)
“Those questions you heard – and the search for their answers – receive a good portion of our energy and resources every day. Around the world. That’s what any business faces in today’s rapidly changing global environment. Changes in public policy, competition and technology are driving the need to continually evaluate and quickly adjust business models as progress marches on.
“The central strategic focus for Lucent is growth. So we also face other questions besides those on the tape. As I said, one of our most familiar questions is: 'How are we going to grow this business more aggressively?' That’s been a central focus for us at Lucent since we were granted the nearly unique opportunity to re-invent a 125-year old business and position it for the 21st century.”
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“Now let me turn away from our specific experiences with markets, segments, customer offers, etc. and turn to some things that are more fundamental to every business.
“’How do you set goals when you want to be a growth company?’ ‘How do you compensate when you want to be a growth company?’ ‘What kind of a culture do you try to create when you want to be a growth company?’ These are management issues that really don’t have anything to do with your product portfolio, the market space, the customers or even the industry.
“We did correlative work based on the question ‘What is it that creates shareholder value?’ The answer is -- growth. It’s revenue and earnings growth and predictability. We made a connection between shareholder value and growth. We established and clearly communicated the importance of top line growth to support bottom line growth. We reflected that in our compensation philosophy and thinking.
“At launch, we gave options to every person. We also use options more deeply. In fact, we have had to change our whole paradigm about how we acquire and retain people. But then – we set audacious goals for ourselves and didn’t know how we were going to make them. We created a brand that was different. We conveyed an attitude, got some buzz. We launched in a way that set the stage for a culture that’s been called ‘jazzed and sassy.’”
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