As a former Motorola employee and current stockholder, I like to keep an eye on the Motorola news. With the annual meeting coming up next week, the business media are commenting on the expectations. An item in Reuters story caught my eye by mentioning that the company will spotlight Ed Breen this time. He is "straight talker who sets tough standards."

Well, I feel so much better now. Obviously Motorola's drop from dominating their most important market (cell phones) to a weak second place was all caused by not having a tough Daddy to steer the company and make all the engineers and marketing goofs behave themselves. It can't possibly have been caused by not understand what their big customers want, never launching a product on time, and brute-force methods for reliability and manufacturability.

What an eye-opener my 18 months at Motorola were. I call it "The End of Management"