EXECUTION
EXECUTING AT EDS Now let’s look at a formerly troubled company whose new CEO brought the discipline of execution. EDS had a lot in common with Xerox when Dick Brown took the helm in January 1999. EDS created its field, computer services outsourcing, and had been successful for decades. Then the information technology market changed, and EDS didn’t. Competitors like IBM grabbed the growth. Revenues were flat, earnings declining, and the stock price sinking. Like Thoman, Brown came from another industry—in his case, telecommunications. He’d previously turned around Cable & Wireless, the British telecommunications giant. At EDS, he faced a deeply embedded culture in need of fundamental change, one that was indecisive and lack ing accountability, along with an organizational structure that no longer fit the needs of the marketplace. Two more parallels: not long after arriving, Brown set goals for rev enue and earnings growth so ambitious that most people in the company thought them impossible to meet. And he subjected the company to a massive reorganization. There the similarities end. Brown is deeply executionoriented, and there was never any doubt who was in charge. While he points out that the transformation of EDS is still a work in progress, he successfully changed the fundamentals of the company in two years. He infused it with an energy and focus it hadn’t experienced since its early days, and he met his profit and growth goals. Brown’s vision was that EDS could grow strongly and profitably by meeting the fast-growing new needs for infor mation technology services. These services range from digitization within companies to virtual retailing and elec tronic integration, where companies work with suppliers, 46