'I've Always Been a Human Modem.'

Writing the Rules of Engagement

When Webb took over the personal-networks group in 1999, a key Motorola partnership with IBM was breaking down. The two companies had been looking for ways to collaborate on powerful new systems that would feed Web content over wireless networks, drawing on Motorola's understanding of telecommunications and on IBM's expertise in computers. But the partnership was going nowhere, largely because each company's engineers believed that they had better technology. Mark F. Bregman, 43, former general manager of pervasive computing at IBM, was ready to scuttle the partnership. "We're wasting our time flying back and forth every few months to hold these meetings," he told Webb.

One reason Webb is so good at building relationships is that she's willing to look at the world from the point of view of counterparts like Bregman. Over her career, in dozens of alliances and in hundreds of initiatives within Motorola, Webb has refined her ability to locate the key results that a partner needs in order to succeed, and then to tie those results to her own needs. "It's not a coy negotiation," she says. "You can't afford to be coy anymore. People are looking you in the eye and asking themselves, Is she real?"

Bregman's call meant that it was time "to restate the rules of engagement," Webb says. "That means starting with what you must have in order to make the partnership a success." For Bregman, it was essential that the system incorporate WebSphere, IBM's platform for global e-business. Without that, Bregman couldn't justify the effort or the expense of joining forces with Motorola to break into the market for wireless-Internet systems. "Fine," Webb said. "That's your core, and we'll make sure we don't enter your space."

She explained that Motorola needed control of the communications elements -- the gateways that people would use to connect to the wireless Web. "When it comes to the telecom piece, that is part of who we are. We won't give that up."

It took about 10 minutes for Webb and Bregman to arrive at a basic understanding of how they could work together. But there were still issues. The deadlock that had IBM and Motorola stalled was a debate over which operating system to use as the foundation for the software they would build to run over the wireless Internet. Webb's team at Motorola favored Microsoft NT; Bregman's team at IBM was committed to Unix. Webb saw a way to make the relationship even stronger. "I've come to the conclusion that we may need to build on Unix," she told Bregman. "If that's the case, I'll make my team adopt it -- or I'll get a new team."

Commitment that deep is rare, and it turned Bregman into a powerful ally. "Janiece is not just looking for what it takes to make her business and Motorola successful," he says. "Hers is a more mature view of partnerships than what you typically find at a lot of American companies or even European companies."

Those same skills enabled Webb to navigate a delicate pass with Philippe Kahn, one of the most colorful personalities (and one of the healthiest egos) in Silicon Valley. In 1998, Motorola acquired Starfish Software Inc., the maker of electronic address books and calendars that Kahn founded and ran as CEO; in the process, Kahn became one of the largest individual shareholders in Motorola. Kahn was intrigued by the potential of wireless technology and turned his entrepreneurial talents to developing some far-out applications for wireless networks. When Webb took over the personal-networks group, she became Kahn's liaison at Motorola.

One day, Kahn went into Webb's office with a prototype that he had built for a wireless digital camera that snapped onto a cell-phone and that transmitted pictures the instant they were taken. Webb was captivated. The wireless digital camera that Kahn was proffering was just the kind of killer app that Webb needed in order to establish Motorola as a player in the wireless-Web market. "It's unbelievably cool," she told Kahn. "But we have stuff at Motorola Labs that can sort of do that." Kahn argued against moving the project inside Motorola, where he was afraid it would stagnate. "The people you need to work on a visionary venture like this are probably not the kind of guys who work inside a large company like Motorola," he told Webb. "You need a complete end-to-end solution that's commercial, not just a science project."

They went back and forth for a couple of weeks. "The discussions were painful and rough," Kahn says. "Initially, she didn't accept anything. I could tell Janiece was looking, talking to a lot of people in the company and asking them, 'What do you know about this stuff?' " But the technology inside Motorola wasn't as far along as Kahn's, and Webb desperately wanted a wireless digital camera that she could push into the market rapidly.