|
|
|
ONLINE FEATURES
Book Reviews
BW Video
Columnists
Interactive Gallery
Newsletters
Past Covers
Philanthropy
Podcasts
Special Reports
BLOGS
The Auto Beat
Byte of the Apple
Europe Insight
Eye on Asia
Getting In
Investing Insights
The New Entrepreneur
NEXT: Innovation Tools & Trends
On Media
Technology at Work
The Tech Beat
Traveler's Check
TECHNOLOGY
Product Reviews
Tech Stats
Hands On
AUTOS
Home Page
Auto Reviews
Car Care & Safety
INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip FINANCE Investing: Europe Annual Reports Bloomberg BW50 SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth Companies: 2008 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs Rankings & Profiles |  |
OCTOBER 25, 2004
A Talk with UTC's Brainy Boss CEO George David says his "intellectual upbringing" molded his style today: "I do not mouth platitudes. I hate corporate-speak" In his decade as chief executive at United Technologies Corp.,(UTX ) George David has transformed a middling industrial conglomerate into a global powerhouse. He recently spoke with Associate Editor Diane Brady. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation: Q: If you had to sum up your aspirations in running UTC, what would they be? A: I want a really well-functioning organization, with the right kinds of values and high productivity and good products that customers want to buy, as well as a motivated workforce.... When I came to this job, UTC had great franchises, but it didn't have returns consummate with those businesses. The first thing we worked on was improving those margins from 4% to 14%. This is all a factor of doing things better -- with higher productivity, lower costs, and better products and services. Q: Your $60 million Employee Scholar Program allows people to study pretty much whatever they want and get paid time off. Why so generous? A: What changes people's lives more than any other single thing is education. That's how you control and guide your future. The obligation on any entity, whether it's your parent, your government, or your employer, is to give you the opportunity to pursue an education. I think that's an absolute right in a well-functioning society and in a well-functioning organization. Q: Your father was a Rhodes Scholar. What was he like around the house? A: He was older than usual for a father. He was 57 when I was born. Necessarily, he was a little bit more detached. He was also a very intellectual person -- highly educated and very thoughtful. I gave some remarks at his funeral. I never heard him raise his voice in the entire 42 years that I knew him. He was calm and thoughtful. It's how I try to be when I'm at my best. Q: What about your mother? A: My mother was strong-minded and willful. Strong executives typically have strong moms, and that was true in my case. She was highly educated, with a couple of graduate degrees. She did library science as a second degree. Q: It sounds like an intimidating household. A: I would say it was an intellectual upbringing. I think I have an unusually broad vocabulary and pretty precise use of the language because of my parents. I was a voracious reader in my early teenage years. I read all the [Sir Walter Scott] novels. I think that's where you get language from, in terms of classic literary mechanisms like metaphor, alliteration, or parallel structure. I read a lot of biographies of Richard Francis Burton. If I could be anyone else in the world, I would want to be Richard Francis Burton. Imagine being able to speak 40 languages and write 40 books. That's terrifying. He had a life devoted to exploration and learning. I also like the [William] Manchester books, like Goodbye Darkness. I decided to go and see the [World War II] Pacific theater sites, in part because of his books. Q: What was it about that period that moved you? A: It's going to sound like sappy idealism. America had an extraordinary influence on world civilization in the middle years of the 20th century. We absolutely did the right thing. I'm interested in the years from the Depression through the early part of the Vietnam War. I've had the unique experience of traveling to almost every country in the world and seeing almost every government up close.... I think it's incumbent on our government to make this society a well-functioning society. Q: You went to Harvard, but you've implied that the experience left you cold. A: I went to Harvard too young. Harvard is a permissive educational system. It takes a more mature, self-starting individual than I was at that time. I had the usual problems with late adolescence. When I went to Darden [School of Business] immediately after Harvard, it was like a switch was turned on. I didn't get the bang out of learning at Harvard. I got the bang out of learning in Darden. I was terrified my first year at Darden. I think fear is a good motivator. I was certain I would have three Cs my first year, even though I ended up first in my class. Q: When I saw you tour a factory in Texas earlier this year, it struck me that you weren't really the glad-handing type. At the very least, you didn't seem interested in playing cheerleader to the troops. A: I see too many people walk through a plant, stop at each station for 5 or 10 seconds, listen to the employee deliver a canned statement, and then walk on. To me, it's a sign of respect and appreciation to the individual who commits his or her life to that work for me to express enough interest to have an original thought. I ask a bunch of questions. If I'm lucky, they start to talk, and all of a sudden we have communication. You don't do as many of those, but the ones you do are high-quality communication. Q: How do you foster that kind of communication? A: I write my own speeches. The words that come out of my mouth are words that I believe. I do not mouth platitudes. I hate corporate-speak. It's banality. All that stuff about "programs" and "change." Among other things, there are lots of grammatical mistakes. Every sentence begins with "And." You cannot use words like "drive," as in to force or cause. It just bothers me. I think I'm persuasive because I honestly believe what I say. Q: Do you get sentimental about keeping jobs in America? A: UTC, until the very recent past, has no history of job outsourcing because we are a big gross net exporter of American products, thanks to the aerospace businesses. The stuff we build offshore is built offshore to serve local clients. We build air conditioners and elevators, which are big and bulky, and just don't ship. We export about $4 billion a year, and we import about in the range of $300 million. So the ratio is about 13:1 of export value to import value. The job value ratio is about 6:1. There are six times more man-hours in the products we export than there are in the products we import. Q: When will you retire from your job? A: I'm 62, and there are some years left before I retire in the ordinary course. Succession is several years away. There is appropriate discussion at every board meeting, and the board has given appropriate attention to it. When I do retire, though, I won't go to Florida and play golf. I have too much energy.  Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
 Copyright 2004, Bloomberg L.P.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version
