04/22/96 A GUY WHO FOCUSES ON THE DOABLE

A GUY WHO FOCUSES ON THE DOABLE

Mike Armstrong has always been a pragmatist. When he won football scholarships to both the University of Michigan and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, he picked the less well-known Miami. ``I took one look at those guys on the Michigan team,'' recalls Armstrong. ``They were all so enormous, I figured I'd never have a chance.'' The choice paid off: Armstrong was a star Miami halfback for two years, until he was sidelined by injuries.
The choice was also typical Armstrong. From the time he was a boy growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in Detroit, Armstrong has been known as an intense competitor with a knack for focusing on the do-able. Fraternity brother Tom Angus remembers that Armstrong did well at school--``not because he was a particularly brilliant student,'' Angus says, but because he threw himself diligently into whatever he took up. It's a trait that's propelled Armstrong throughout his long career.
Early on, Armstrong also displayed the easy charisma that would later make him such a strong salesman. He was captain of his high school football team and senior class president. At age 14, Armstrong started dating Anne Gossett; seven years later, they married. ``Mike was always the leader of our group,'' says high school friend Patricia Trosin. ``He even got us to try pizza for the first time.''
THE HARD TIMES. But close friends and family say there were hard times, too. In 1956, his father lost his job as an electrical engineer. For years, the family struggled as his father built his own business. Armstrong credits his mother, Zora, with providing the backbone the family needed--and the inspiration that has driven him so far. ``She gave us unyielding self-confidence that we could be whatever we set out to be--no limits,'' he says.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in business, Armstrong got a half-dozen job offers. He quickly narrowed his choice to IBM and Procter & Gamble Co. ``I already knew who I was going to marry,'' says Armstrong. ``So all I had to figure out was who I was going to work for.''
Armstrong chose Big Blue, and as IBM boomed in the 1960s, he rose swiftly, learning every aspect of the mainframe business--from systems engineering and marketing to finance. But he made his biggest mark in the late 1980s, when he jump-started IBM's troubled European arm. Fellow execs remember both his jovial charm--and overriding competitiveness. ``If you describe anything to Mike as a contest, he wants to win,'' says James Cannavino, president of Perot Systems, who worked with Armstrong for two decades at IBM.
Today, Armstrong and his wife have three adult daughters, and they split their time between a home in Darien, Conn., and another in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Armstrong still has plenty of the old athlete in him. To relax, he likes to zip around on his two vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycles. And on weekends, Armstrong unwinds by playing tennis-- though his games are hardly casual matches. Fred Scholtz, a retired banker from Morgan Stanley & Co. with whom Armstrong often plays, describes him as a ferocious rival. Even if it takes all day, ``Mike won't quit until he wins a set,'' says Scholtz. ``Mike doesn't take chances. He just gets the ball back every time and wears you down. He lets the other guy beat himself.'' That's called playing the smart point in tennis. It's also pretty much the way Armstrong has lived his life.
By Eric Schine in Los Angeles