It’s rare that CEOs are promoted from within organizations
these days. Given the increasing pressures of the position and
the need for quick results, many boards turn to outside hires
when the CEO position is vacated. It’s rarer still that company
employees would nominate one of their peers for the top job in
the company and that the board would heed their suggestion.
But that’s exactly what happened in January 2005 when Mike
Klayko became CEO of Brocade Communications Systems
Inc.
Considering that the company’s previous CEO and the vice
president of human resources had just resigned because of a
stock backdating scandal, Klayko entered the role when the
company was in crisis mode.
“It was a tough time,” Klayko says. “The company situation
was turbulent, and we had lots of internal and external pressures on us, and suddenly, I was the new boy in the CEO suite.
The easiest thing would have been to stay in my position as
head of sales and marketing or go look for something else.
After all, I had been with the company since 2003, and I knew
the industry and the sales and marketing division well. When
my peers came to me and said that they wanted me and would
support me to become the new CEO and I received support
from the board and my wife, all of the pieces just came together.”
Surrounded by shattered trust, Klayko says that he needed to
rebuild confidence both internally and externally, but he says
that he also knew that rebuilding trust takes time.
In addition, another situation waiting for Klayko was the fact
that even prior to the stock backdating crisis, the excitement
among employees in the company had waned, organic growth
had subsided and Brocade had become reliant on a very small
product base. In short, he says, the company was stagnant.
In order to establish a platform that would serve as a launch-pad for new growth initiatives, Klayko prioritized his initial
repositioning efforts on increasing accountability, establishing
a shared vision and creating a new culture. Klayko says that
executing his plan consistently, over time, would eventually
return trust to Brocade.
