Leader - Bob Moffat

Although he has spent his entire career -- 23 years -- at IBM, Moffat's success owes much to an anti-IBM style in things both big and small. He wears slacks and a golf shirt to work -- and requested that his boss do the same when Palmisano addressed Moffat's troops last year. Moffat always shows up on time for meetings, a sign of accountability and respect for his colleagues that is almost unheard of at his level. Says one senior manager: "We have a phrase for it here. It's called 'calendar integrity.' No one that high up has it."

Moffat works out of Raleigh, North Carolina, where part of his division designs and makes personal computers, rather than in Armonk, New York at IBM headquarters. He is the first IBM group leader to run a business from the field (indeed, even his secretary works out of New York).

Moffat makes no show of doing his job with ease or grace. Shaking up a business this big is sweaty, demanding work. By his own reckoning, Moffat usually spends 15 or 16 hours a day at the office -- arriving between 5 AM and 6 AM and not leaving for home until between 8 PM and 9 PM. The early mornings, he says, are a great time to think. "Lots of people who have jobs like this are so concerned with doing that they never spend time thinking."

Moffat has a "reverse mentor." Every six weeks, he sits down for an hour with Inhi Cho, a rising mid-level manager who is 26 years old and has only been at IBM for four years. Moffat wants to know how the PC group looks from her perspective. Says Cho: "It has to be tough for him to listen to someone who's half his age telling him what she thinks. But he's a good listener. Very good."

And there is nothing of the stereotypical Big Blue Organization Man about Moffat. His criticism, his questions, and his praise are all equally blunt. Indeed, he routinely barks at subordinates and suppliers. Says Fran O'Sullivan, general manager of IBM's desktop and laptop business: "If he's yelling at you, he's trying to help you. If he's quiet after you talk, you'd better start to look for work, because you're dead."

"Look at the Tombstones of Your Predecessors"

Moffat is sitting at a small conference table in his office, a dozen sheets of paper before him that detail the performance of his groups during the past month. His laptop -- cordless but fully connected through IBM's wireless network -- is at his elbow, so he can send and receive instant messages during a two-hour global conference call with his senior managers in cities as diverse as Lima, Paris, and Tokyo. If he didn't have a visitor, Moffat would be alone with his data and his speakerphone. His remote location does nothing to dilute his commanding personality.

This "weekly operations meeting" among managers is a global conference call that has been an institution in the PC division. But Moffat's predecessor, Dave Thomas, never bothered to participate. Moffat opens the meeting by saying, "I wouldn't call it a terrible July, but a mixed one. The question is, How do we get it done in August? Because if we don't, we'll never make it up in September." Characteristically, he asks for an explanation not only of weak desktop sales, but also of unexpectedly strong ThinkPad sales. "Let's talk about why that's happening. How do we capitalize on it?"

Moffat doesn't talk much, but he also doesn't let someone else's bluster pass without a challenge. In fact, one of Moffat's signature phrases is, "Let's not perfume the pig." He is known as a consummate straight talker: He tells people what he thinks, he wants the truth back in return, and he prefers to receive bad news early.

That attitude pays dividends in efficiency and in changing culture: Insight Enterprises Inc., an IBM reseller, recently complained that its original contract was hobbling its growing relationship with Big Blue. In the old days, says Insight CEO Tim Crown, "We wouldn't even have gotten a call back." Moffat and a deputy personally went through Insight's list of 15 concerns and updated the contract. The result is better for both Insight and IBM.

At this meeting, after listening to his European sales chief, Moffat is so put out that he rises to pace and shouts, "You guys are rallying around the lower sales number, the must-make number. That's a failure number. You need to shoot higher, damn it! You need to change that."

What distinguishes Moffat's leadership, of course, isn't his ability to raise his voice. What's notable about Moffat is that he does a remarkable job of keeping opposing forces in balance. He knows that strategy is critical, but he also knows that it takes more than that. "The people who win are the people who execute," he says. "They have milestones for what they are going to do and metrics to measure if they are reaching those milestones. Many managers stop after the strategy. They expect people to just get it."