How Would You Rate Mike Z.'s Leadership Skills

looks like Mike had some of his cabinet vote.

He's one of the top reasons why I left mid'07 - only spewed GE-Walsh'isms - nothing creative - we really needed creative leadership to drive the creative resources that made Nortel - it was very disappointing to watch this all happen - what was the BoD thinking?!?

No charisma
Never made a serious decision
Could not control his cabinet
Mandatory annual cutting of bottom 10% does not work (ask MSFT)
Hypocritical (e.g. Hackney affair)

However, planning cadence (Sessions I-IV) was a great idea that was executed about on par with Iraq nation building

Tired of the same'ole positive wordsmithing. Mike has kept the real dire-hard Nortel employees holding on to this ship as it flows down the Niagra River. And while the FALLS are in sight, he is still standing at the helm telling us we will be stronger. Well once we go over, I guess whoever survives ought to be strong, but unemployed. To boot, those of us who've bought that constant mantra and are believers do everything possible to hold it together will soon be taken for a walk, and the only thing we'll get is the door hitting us in the rear on the way out!

My point of view is Mike Z' leadership was not too bad at his level. Concerns are from his Cabinet, Executives who were not trustables.
Worse, the strategy and the vision which were based on wrong choices. Not really bad choices, becauses they were rationalized, but they has failled due to lack of competencies from the main stakeholders. The result is the same : overall strategy has been a set of mistakes :
- practice LSS when there are no more processes whithin Nortel has been a foreseen failure ("Quality or Process & methods Teams disbanded; no tool for data collection
- too many changes in the organisation without relevant effect ;
* Product domains went from "LCs" (Wireless-Wireline_Optical) to MCCN to Business Units Carrier to CVAS...
* Operations from "Customer Care" through "GCCSO" to "GO & SC", to "Service delivery"..... loosing year after year their footprint and competencies in Pre-Sales activities, in Service commercialisation and operationnal objectives.
Each time it has been announced as "New, Relevant, Powerfull, closer to customer...".
In fact, all executives and leaders were just trying to secure their position and the clans they have been leading throught Matrix organizations : they got Incentives when result were good, they were net accountable when things gone wrong.
but from the base, it has been a disaster because people losted their references along time ago without any "familly", witout any ownership.
In summary : lack of "Responsibility" for employees and services has been the lethal thrust.

Anyone who takes $11m for signing on at the same time proclaiming how honoured, excited and proud he is of becoming CEO of this great company starts with a major mismatch between actions and words and from then on you are on the back foot. To be fair to Mike this is exactly how his peer group (i.e. the worlds top management) operate and only an exceptional character would have waived the Motorola golden handcuffs and stated that he would only take the money if he actually produced the results.

The post on Nortel BoD paying Motorola $10M is right on. Only, it gets better. He signed a contract, made a binding agreement w/ Mot. Broke it, then soon after asked the newly arrived VP of Ethics (Ethics ?) to have all employees sign an Ethics Contract. Now I ask you, Mr. Hypocrisy - do you know the difference between morals and ethics?