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Bill Mitchell has been the President and CEO of Arrow Electronics, located in New York, since February 2003. Soon after his career started, he moved to Raychem International and worked there from 1973-1993, where he headed various divisions of the company. In 1993, he moved to Nashua Corporation, which he led for two years before moving to Sequel, a privately held company. He then joined Solectron and helped build its global services division to over $1 billion in annual revenue. Mitchell earned a BS in engineering from Princeton University, and an MS in engineering from the University of Michigan. He is a director of Rogers. He has a wife and children.
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PH: The first question is, what was the first full-time job you held after college or graduate school?
BM: I went to work for what was then a little company in California, called Raychem Corporation. I was a freshly minted engineer from the University of Michigan, and went to work for them as a production supervisor in a wire and cable plant.
PH: So when you took that job, what were the factors that made you go there? What were the things that made you think of that job over others?
BM: It was a couple of things. If you look back on it, it's interesting. One was, ah, it was a small, rapidly growing California technology company - kind of looked interesting compared to some of the other opportunities I was looking at, which tended to be very large, stable companies. And it was in California, where I was from originally and wanted to get back to. And they did a great job of recruiting me. They were, ah
PH: Persuasive?
BM: Yeah, they were very persuasive.
PH: Okay, and you mentioned a few factors, and I can certainly believe that, it being a fairly complex decision. What really stands out in your mind in terms of the weighting? Was it - I guess another way to phrase it is, if you had found a lesser company in California, or say, a more interesting industry but in a different location, how would you have weighted that decision?
BM: Interesting question. I quite frankly don't remember making this into too big a deal. This wasn't a huge analytical exercise. I came out and interviewed for a bunch of companies. At that point in time - this was 1967, 1968 - and jobs were reasonably plentiful, I had technical training and engineers were in short supply, so there was a certain amount of market opportunity. So I went and interviewed with a bunch of companies that looked interesting to me. They were all over the map. They were small companies and big companies, all over the country, from different industries. [I] did a lot of interviewing. And it ultimately came down to, sort of, I liked the people, I liked the industry, a lot of things lined up, but it wasn't a big analytical process where I lined them up and did weightings, pluses and minuses, and things like that. At the end of the day, it met a lot of my criteria, and there were those pluses and minuses, and the chemistry seemed to be there - it felt right.
By the way, I've come to believe that a lot of decisions get made on that basis, particularly early in your career.
PH: Sure. So when you did go in, I can understand that orientation, in terms of thinking about it to some degree, but not being overly analytical. What about your goals? Once you did accept that job, did you have a very specific plan or set of goals you wanted to achieve within the company?
BM: Not really. There wasn't a burning desire that said, "I have to put myself on a path to be the CEO." I barely knew what a CEO was at that time. What it was was, "Gee, here's an opportunity. I'm getting out of school. I can actually make some money, and have two cents to rub together. And maybe I'll get some promotions along the way." It was pretty vague at that point in that time as to what it was I was going to do. I didn't have a clearly defined end goal that said this is where I want to get to in the business world.
PH: Okay, so at that point you were just most focused on doing a good job, enjoying what you were doing, and so forth?
BM: Learning, developing skills, doing a good job, seeing what was available.
PH: Did you see yourself as a technical person at that point, or a business person?
BM: I saw myself as an engineer at that point in time.
PH: Okay, so can you describe for me your progress from that first job, how things went? I guess in particular I'm interested in that transition over to the business side.
BM: Sure. It was interesting, because I stayed with Raychem only for about 14 months, and it turned out that the reality was different than the picture painted, and that's often true in your first job. You're very inexperienced and pretty naïve about what businesses are about and what it takes to be successful. It really wasn't a company that in my view - there were lots of things I liked about it, but it wasn't a particularly good place for a young person who needed lots of experience, that was going to get that training and experience. It was very fast paced, which I liked, but it was a company that prided itself on doing lots of very different sorts of things. I didn't have those skills, and there was no way to get at those particular skills - both technical skills and business skills.
So at the end of the first year - and this was true at the time, I'm not sure it's true anymore - some of the recruiters who I'd met the year before came back around and said, "How's it going?" recognizing that young folks are oftentimes in their first job get a bit disillusioned by the realities that they find. And some of them came calling, and I started listening. In particular, I listened to one from the Exxon Corporation - total other end of the scale: large, well-managed company, in a very stable industry. They came knocking and said, "We'd like to have you come work for us in New York in our corporate planning group." That sounded really interesting to me. So I decided to go do that, and I did it. I was with Exxon for 5 years.
And there again - there wasn't a real burning desire that said, "I've got to go be the CEO of Exxon." Though at that point I started to say, "Hmm, there's this thing called a career that you've got to worry about, and you've got to do some career management and check some boxes..." That became VERY obvious in a place like Exxon where it was a very stable, well-organized - with very prescribed paths that you got from point A to point B. I got on the Exxon track, spent a couple of years in NY, then got transferred down to Baton Rouge, LA, because one of things they said was [that] you couldn't spend all your time in a corporate-planning department. You had to get some operational experience.
So I went to a refinery, and was able to use some of the technical background. At that point in time you became aware in career types of things that there are some boxes you have to check. Maybe you need some international experience, some financial experience. That's about the time that I started to say, Hmmm, you've got to think about some of these things. Still had no thoughts of how far it might go. It was still, do a good job, try to get recognized, enjoy your surroundings and environment.
PH: And how old were you around this time?
BM: By this time, I would've been around 27-28.
PH: So at that point, had you started a family?
BM: I was married, but we didn't have kids at that time.
PH: So you were still focused on your career, and not having to juggle too much in terms of work-life balance?
BM: Exactly.
PH: That's another topic about which I'm curious. In general, how have you found the struggle - or has it been a struggle at all, to maintain that balance as your career has progressed?
BM: (Pauses) Another interesting question...The answer is yes, because one of the interesting things that happened is that Raychem then came back and said they have a job for me. At that time, I was ready to get back to California, and they'd grown, and I'd grown into a different place, so I went back to them. I ultimately ended up spending 20 years with them.
Shortly after I got back to them, they asked me to take an assignment to run their South American operations, which were relatively small, but interesting. I said, "Well, I can't move to South America, but that would certainly be interesting. Could I do it from California?" And they said sure, you're just going to travel a lot. So at that point in time the whole issue of work-life balance came into VERY sharp focus. By that time we had started a family, small kids, and I can remember sitting down with my wife, who's been an absolute pillar throughout all of this, and I said, "Look, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to spend some time on the road, and there'll be lots of nights and weekends away - because you know, you don't fly from California to Brazil for a day. It's more like a couple of weeks." And we said we would do that.
PH: So you remember this as a deliberate conversation?
BM: Absolutely.
PH: Was this series of conversations? Was this a long conversation, or just a...
BM: Series of conversations.
PH: So it was a very serious thing that the two of you undertook as partners?
BM: Absolutely.
PH: That's interesting.
BM: Yeah, and she's been with me all the way. Always been my best counselor. I always went and talked to her. And where we got to [in this situation] was, "Hey, this would be really good. Can support it, but we're going to need you to be home for the key events in the kids' lives, the birthdays, the holidays, the school plays, and all that stuff. And when you're home, you need to be home. You can't be on the phone all the time - there wasn't really email at that time, but doing 'stuff' - and so while you're gone, work real hard and do those things, and when you're home, be home." And we've always worked that out, and we made a deal, so that the last thing we did before I left and went and got on a plane is we'd have a sort of a family event, and the first thing we did when I got back was a family event. It was sort of to make sure there were rituals and ceremonies around the travel. That became very important.
Very early on, I figured out that wasn't so much for the family. That was for me. That was the way I could stay centered, and stay on focus, was to have the family there. That's always been a very very important piece of my life - really the centerpiece of my life. That became terribly important.
When I started doing that traveling - and that would've been in 1979-1980 - when I started doing international traveling - Sort of 10 years of the best experiences I'd had to date, and some of the best experiences I've ever had - and then began to see that there was a path ahead, and started to think a bit about, "Gee, maybe I could take a really senior position in this company." So kind of in the early to mid thirties was when things started to say that maybe there is a longer runway out there, and it'll be good for you, and compete for some of the more senior positions. Still no thoughts about being a president or CEO at that time.
PH: I'd like to get to that in just a second, but just to circle back to one thing you'd said earlier - You had said that early on, that a lot of the family life and balance was important for your centeredness. I was curious how you made that realization? What triggered that thought in you?
BM: It was really - I'd done a lot of international travel. International travel takes a huge toll out of you. You get jetlagged, you're tired a lot. If you weren't coming back to - into something that was VERY stable, and very calming to you, you could very quickly - very quickly saw that you lost your rudder. You were moving faster and faster and making less and less progress, and it just - it just wasn't a life. It got to be absolutely critical - Again, it wasn't this flash of light. It was a sort of dawning that said, this is really important to you. You've got to make sure you do this, and do this right.
PH: Okay. So to get back to what you were finishing up what you were saying - you'd reached this point in your mid-thirties where you started to get the glimmer of some of the bigger things to which you might aspire in the future. I'm curious how you - what motivation you had? Obviously, motivation #1 that anyone has in holding a job is to make a living and support a family. I'd be curious to understand, as you evolved in your career, from your early 20s to that mid-30s stage and beyond, how your thinking changed in terms of what was really exciting you to come to work every day every morning?
BM: A couple of things: one, I really did like international business. I liked it, I liked doing it, I liked the challenges it provided. I liked the complexity of it, the people you met, the things that you were able to learn - there were just all those things that went along with it. And then you found out that when you developed some capabilities in that area, that in fact that was a reasonably valuable skillset, that there weren't a lot of people that had the degree of international experience - and I'd spent a lot of time in difficult parts of the world: China at the time, India, Africa, the Middle East, places like that which were not quite as pleasant as flying off to Paris for a week or so. And I liked it. And I said, there's something you can do here, and if you can do it for companies that have important international operations, then there's a chance you can take more responsibilities. It turned out - I found out that I liked managing people, I liked managing organizations. As I grew and developed and had management responsibilities, I found out I liked it. I liked the strategic challenges - so a lot of the things that I began to be introduced to as I got higher in the organization, I really liked. The business challenges, the strategic challenges, I liked the people challenges, so I got more excited and said, let's see if we can get a little further. And I was having a bit of success at that time.
PH: So the overall picture I'm getting is that you just intrinsically enjoyed what you were doing. There were a lot of aspects of the job - the international, cosmopolitan nature of your job, then functionally, as you say, the actual product, the people - you really got into that.
BM: I did. I really did. I liked it very much.
PH: And - thinking about your whole life, including your non-work things, is that your personality, or something you grew into?
BM: I think I've always gravitated to things that I would be curious about and wanted to learn more about and felt I could grow into, as opposed to just - as I said, I didn't really have a master plan. I did know that I wanted to be places where I'd be challenged stimulated and learn things and meet interesting people. And as I got more and more into it, I gravitated more strongly to those areas.
PH: Okay - because the thing that's interesting to me is, you know, I look at leaders like you, and on the one hand, there's just this superior capability or competency. There are basic tasks that have to be done to become a leader, and you execute those better or with greater skill than the average person. But then there's also the motivational element - and I'm very curious about what it is that puts people like you into the mindset necessary to aspire to the great heights - you know, to start to think in your mid-30s and beyond.
Just to be more specific, some people say it's a lot of how I was raised, and the background that was instilled in me; other people say it was this innate drive and this competitive spirit in my personality. It seems like from you, I'm hearing, it's a lot about having this environment that was very interesting and held a lot of curiosity for you and - it's almost like there's this ball of string, and you're tugging on the end of the string, and started unraveling, and you just kept going further and further with it.
BM: I think that's reasonably true. I've always liked to go to places where I was challenged, and interested and intrigued and could learn. As I started moving through the business world, I found that the higher I got, the more I liked the kinds of challenges you got to - they were bigger, more complex. I liked them, I seemed to be reasonably successful at them. Then another one of those dawnings - I don't have the bolts of lightning that come out of the sky at me - Ah, but one of those dawnings that said, "Hmmm, you like it, you're challenged by it, you seem to be having some success at it. When you take a step forward, it looks better, so...keep moving forward!"
PH: Switching topics, what about mentors, or other individuals who played an important role in your career development? Can you think of specific people, or are there people who stand out?
BM: Yeah. Almost throughout my career, there's not been one that's been there throughout, but there've always been series of them, ranging from people when I was in college that sort of moved me in directions, to first jobs, that talked to me at critical junctures in my life. I can think of when I was with Exxon in Baton Rouge there was a guy who was an ex-football star for Louisiana State University - fabulous mentor, just in terms of talking to me about what leadership was about, and how you led people.
PH: And how did you strike up that relationship? Was there any consistent pattern across the different mentors who've helped you?
BM: Some of them have been bosses, some of them people that I sort of worked with, or worked closely with. Typically people that've been in close proximity in the work environment, [who] for whatever reason we struck up a friendship, maybe because I was willing to sit down with them and ask them stuff, and they liked giving it. Lots of people do like being in that. Oftentimes we don't ask.
PH: Do you think of yourself as particularly more proactive about seeking that out, compared to other people?
BM: Yeah, I do. I find it's something I try to teach my kids, to go out and ask a lot of people a lot of things. All they can do is say they don't know or they won't help you, that's the worst thing, but in many cases you'll find all kinds of good stuff. Go ask lots of questions with people, and encourage people to ask questions of you, too.
PH: In terms of a lot of these values, and these approaches you've discussed, what about forks in the road? Did you come to any situations where you had legitimate pulls in opposite directions, where maybe one approach or value was telling you to go in one direction, but another was telling you to do something different? I'm curious how those kinds of junctures in your career came up, and how you handled them.
BM: A lot of those forks in the road - some of them came very early, and some of them came very late in my career. In the early part of my career, I had an opportunity to move in a very different direction, to move really in an academic direction, and to go be part of a university press, and edit the Einstein papers. I was at Exxon at the time. I was very intrigued by it; it was very challenging, and interesting, fascinating work. Thought long and hard about it, and decided not to do that, but really thought long and hard about it - and would've gone in a very different direction. My life would've taken a very different turn had I done that. And I don't regret it at all.
PH: And how did you resolve that in your mind, when you were intrigued?
BM: Well, again, it was one of those things where I went and talked with my wife over a period of time - That was when we really did do the pluses and minuses - what would be the good things and bad things, and what it would mean, and try to play it forward, and where it would lead, and was it really going to do what we wanted to do together, and as a family, and all those things. At the end of it, we said we think we're better off walking down the path we're on than going down a new path, and did it, and never really looked back on it.
PH: Interesting. There was this collaborative method to how you handled these big decisions. Was that a consistent pattern to how you handled these decisions?
BM: Absolutely.
PH: Can you think of other things that might have stood out?
BM: In terms of how the decision was made?
PH: Right, other big decisions - other common traits, other things that were common across the big decisions you had.
BM: Sure. If you sort of fast forward it, I went through almost 20 years when I finally got back to Raychem Corporation, and got back to the point where I really did want to become a CEO. It was pretty obvious I wasn't going to - that that wasn't going to work at Raychem, just because of the timing. I was too close in age to the guy who'd been named CEO, and by the time he would've been through his thing, I would've been past the age, and so it was time to go look for something else. So I did.
And again, [I] had found somebody through networking, and being out, that was running a company on the East Coast called Nashua Corporation. Got to know him - had known him for quite awhile. We'd done some sort of consulting work for him on the sort of issues he'd been facing, and he was looking for a successor, found me. We'd talked over a period of time, and ultimately that led to my being named as President of Nashua and ultimately chief executive of Nashua Corporation.
In that case, that was a huge decision. Now I'd spent 20 years with Raychem. I was in a West Coast technology company. We had, by that time, family, deep roots in the community, all that stuff, and it was going to require a move to the East Coast, to an industry that was different than the one I'd known, and very old-line, old company. That was a highly collaborative decision with my family, and my kids - my wife and my kids, ah, a bunch of other good friends - talking it through, you know, helping me walk around this from many different angles, and helping me slice it and dice it in a bunch of different directions. And over time, [I developed a] sort of a growing feeling that says, "This is the right thing for you to do, or is not the right thing for you to do," and we finally said, yup, it's the right thing for you to do.
I still remember, very vividly, a family dinner that we had in Boston, where we sat around and said, "Okay, are we going to do this or not do this?" Where my kids said -
PH: How old were they at this point?
BM: They were - one of them was about to go to college, one of them was in the middle of high school, which was difficult, and one of them was in grade school. They were very supportive, and my wife was very supportive, and it was going to require that I be a bicoastal commuter for awhile, because we had a daughter in high school that we weren't going to move, so it was a very - very much of a family decision. We took it, and again it turned out to be one of those things that didn't work very well. Got inside and it was probably - not exactly the right opportunity, and it was very, very different than what I'd expected. After a couple of years, we again made the decision that we're probably going to be better getting back to the West Coast, so let's start seeing what some of those opportunities are. And the phone rang, of someone I'd been keeping in touch with, and he said, "Hey, I've heard of this opportunity, don't know if you've been looking, but this sounds like you. Would you be interested in being contacted for a company that had been the spinoff from the old Memorex Corporation, and gone to Unisys, and had been spun off into a private company?" And I said I was, because at that point in time, it was the right thing, and got recruited into it, and came back to the West Coast, and again in a pretty collaborative kind of way with the family. I've always used them very very extensively in terms of the life decisions.
PH: One thing that I was curious about in that decision that you were just describing, when you had to leave Raychem after 20 years: Did you regard it as difficult because it was a lot of change, or because - to what extent was there an element of risk in your mind?
I know that change is risky, but separating those out to an extent - change on the one hand, is negative in itself, but the negative around the risk - you know, trying something new and failing at it.
BM: You know, it's funny. The element of risk, of trying something and failing, this may sound, um, this may sound conceited, but I really did believe I could do the job. So that wasn't - I felt like I'd reached a position in my career that I had the skills and capabilities that I could step up and be the CEO of a - in this case, it was about a $600 mm company. So in terms of the risk, I'd looked at it more in terms of, we've always lived on the West Coast, that's where our family and friends are. We have deep roots in there. How is this going to work for everybody if we get to living - this was a New Hampshire company, although we ultimately ended up living in Boston. Gee, I'm leaving something. I've spent a lot of time at Raychem, I really enjoy the company, I enjoy what I'm doing. I'm not going to get the top slot - it's not likely I'm going to get the top slot - but I'm doing pretty doggone well, and so there are always the elements of "pull to" and "push from", and in this case, this was, I wanted to have my shot at being a CEO. I said, you know, they don't grow these jobs on trees, and at the end of the day, let's go try it. Let's see what happens.
And to make sure the family was there - I guess I always believed something my dad had said to me: you can always get another job. It's real hard to get another family. So make sure you do the family things right. If it doesn't work out from a job situation, you can always find another one. And he was a good example of that. He moved around, dramatically changed careers - went from being an investment banker to a farmer when he was in his mid-40s.
PH: Wow, is that right? Interesting. So to sum up a little bit here, looking back on the early part of your career, do you think there were any philosophies, little epigrams, that you incorporated into your behavior, things that you lived by?
BM: The short answer is yes. A lot of that was from my upbringing by my parents, which was you always had to do the best you could do. Don't ever think that every day is the best day of your life, but get the best out of it that you can. Always make a difference. Leave things better than where you found them. Always make sure that you maintain your integrity and ethical values - and that all came from the family upbringing, just part of the way we were brought up.
PH: Well thank you very much. This was very instructive and helpful. You've obviously got a lot of interesting experiences, and hearing about them was definitely interesting.
BM: Well, thank you very much. I appreciated talking with you. I'll be interested on how the research comes out, because again, I suspect you're hearing a lot of different stuff, and it'll be interesting as you start trying to draw conclusions and parallels, commonalities -
PH: Absolutely. I'll keep you updated, and be happy to share my findings. One of the things that I've found interesting are that there are definite things in common, and definitely things that vary, a lot. Actually, family balance is - I've certainly talked to several leaders who have stressed it in the way you have, and I've also talked to several who don't draw a lot of strength from it and tend to, I think, underweight it a little bit.
BM: Hmm, interesting.
PH: So that's one thing that varies. There are other interesting differences, and I'll be happy to circle back to you.
BM: That'd be great fun.
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