New York — Two top CEOs in the consumer electronics industry who didn't aspire to their current jobs were the stars of their own TV at Baruch College, here, on March 14 where they discussed their careers, management styles and the CE industry in general.
Stringer was up first, and when asked by Greenfield how it felt to be the first non-Japanese chairman of Sony, he said, "I'm the accidental occidental," explaining that he never really aspired to be a CEO. He said when he was with CBS News, "I was happy writing!" Eventually he became the producer of "The CBS News With Dan Rather" when it was No. 1 network news program.
Stringer, Anderson Trade Quips, Insights On PBS Show New York — Sony chairman/CEO Sir Howard Stringer joined Best Buy vice chairman/CEO Brad Anderson in the final segment of their CEO Exchange program, to be aired later this year on PBS.
What he did was to try and break down the silos with a program called "Sony United," which, Stringer said, "was not original and sounds like a [soccer] team." But the program got Sony engineers from across the company to begin talking to each other and sharing experiences.
Greenfield reminded Stringer that Sony had its own version of iPod in the works before Apple did. The Sony chairman explained, "In 1997 we were working with IBM on electronic music distribution and could have put this out five years earlier [than iPod]. But we couldn't get our people to understand software. And we are a music company. They saw digital media, panicked and didn't like it." In the end Sony designed a closed music system that didn't work.
Brad Anderson, whose low-key demeanor is well-known, was described in a video report during the program as the "most unlikely of CEOs," and his background illustrated that description.
Instead Schulze asked him who should be the new manager of the store. In an answer that Anderson remarked was "completely out of character," he said, "Me." Schulze agreed as he discussed with Greenfield, that answer changed his life.
With a background on the front line as a sales associate, you could see that the consumer centricity program that allows store personnel to be involved in the decision-making process was not a big leap in faith for someone like Anderson vs. other CEOs.
Best Buy is also rethinking how and when its employees go to work with its "results-oriented work environment," or ROWE, where workers develop their schedules with their managers in advance. Anderson said that this has happened with executives but it is also important "especially for those in the early stage of their careers." It enables the chain to attract more workers and create more loyalty to the company.