Nov. 30, 2007

Motorola said that Edward J. Zander will step down as chief executive of the troubled cell-phone maker on Jan. 1. He will be succeeded by Greg Brown. Zander will continue to serve as chairman of the board until the company's annual shareholders meeting in May 2008. Brown joined the  company in 2003 and has served as president and chief operating officer since March.

I agree with the pledge - especially with replacing non-professionals (Zander, Lewent, Negroponte ...). Pity that the pledge is here so late - when MOT is already heading downhill with no brakes. I do not recall even ONE GOOD thing that Zander did for MOT. All he did was firing people, steadily, quarter after quarter. Even this he did not well - he forgot to fire himself in the first place. If I could I would add to the pledge one more point : all candidates for top management positions shall pass some basic tests in decision making and strategical analysis - I bet most would fail. If they did go through tests like that then they would never be selling phones with such a low margin that would create loss. MOT has many very talented engineers but I saw their skills being wasted on cumbersome, unproductive activities - usually when the "new order" was being introduced. MOT management do not have a plan for the future, they are reactive, work with a very short vision. Another thing is - why keep paying pathetically small dividends for the sake of paying only. If the dividend is so small that it is laughable, then rather don't pay it at all, and instead invest $ in research, marketing and good fashion designers' pay slips (aesthetics is a must for mobile phones etc). Even the phone names that are coming after RAZR show lack of imagination - SLVR, KRZR, RIZR etc - they really can't do any better than picking 4 letters that are almost impossible to pronounce ? And even with RAZR - they follow the easiest path - add a number to a "good" name and that's it (RAZR2). This is what they are paid those millions of dollars in salaries. Really sad.

Mr Jackson - I agree with what you are proposing with the exception of Ed Lampert - Lampert is only interested in 1 company - his own - it is ESL Investments - to be in this "CLUB", you must have a minimum $5 MIL to invest - you cannot touch that investment for 5 years without heavy fine or penalty - his company reaps an incredible average yearly return of about 30% for his investors - if you have the ability to research or investigate what companies he has had his fingers in over the past 15+ years, you might be surprised how those companies faired - you might find that the vast of shareholder return went to his own investors of ESL - be careful who you suggest to the board - you will find that all of a sudden, executives and board members start dropping off - but with an extraordinary unexplainable PLATINUM parachute for their bad performance - or in some cases, NO performance Please visit the following forum - you will find good resources and you may find a few more supporters of your shareholder activism: http://www.retail-worker. com/forum/viewf... Respectfully MrsDD

Motorola needs desperately to follow the model of GE and 3M who let their business managers make business decisions rather than having one person make them for all the businesses (central control). Each business should stand or fall on it's own merits, not get propped up by another profitable business unit. Applying the same organizational theory to all businesses has proven to be a loser for everyone from employee's to shareholders. Each business should be allowed to define how they need to be organized to best serve their markets. Let the manager's manage and hold them accountable for their performance. And, stop the organizational merry-go-round just to create the illusion of progress.

It's time to find a buyer for MOT.

I'd like to see another item in the plan b proposal. One of the news stories says that Zander will get somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-$50 million when he leaves as part of his golden parachute. It's too late to do anything about that, but now is the time to get the board's attention that the next CEO Mot hires shouldn't have such a ridiculously huge golden parachute. They need to find a way to tie it to performance. If the person does well and leaves then by all means reward him/her. But if the company doesn't do well and the he/she leaves there shouldn't be a big payday for leaving.

As a former employee in the Semiconductor Sector I, early on, discovered that Motorola appeared to be playing "follow the leader" rather than planning to BE the leader. This was most apparent when the Power PC processors were being developed. After seeing a succession of "leaders" come and go it is not surprising that Motorola is in the current predicament it is in. I have "suffered" with the rest of the Motorola shareholders to the tune of $50K+ loss in my share worth. There has to be accountability at the top or there will never be any incentive to lead the company to profitability. Salaries tied to performance...poor performance results in loss of bonuses, etc. Afterall, us "lower-echelon" employees get our raises by performing......right? I too am waiting for some "real" leadership for Motorola. BOOT ZANDER NOW!!!!

Such a resourceful idea I'm surprised no one did this earlier. I'm not suprised that Yahoo and Motorola are the first targets! Eric, will you be making another video for you tube and a wiki like you did for the Yahoo campaign?

As a Motorola employee I too am excited about this campaign and pledge my shares to support this cause. The plan is right on and an excellent start to rebuilding this company. We need action now!

I also support much of the proposals of Plan B. Eddie Lampert on the board especially. And how about Warren Buffet? I recommend Dan Maloney head of Home and Network Mobility as CEO.

Despite all the urgings from Ed Zander not to vote for Carl Icahn, those of us who own our shares in MotShare or the 401k couldn't if we had wanted to. We never received the yellow proxy. I was told by Motorola's chief legal counsel that Mr. Icahn expressly indicated he did not want our contact information to mail out ballots to employees. Not to second guess a billionaire activist investor who is seeking a board seat, but why would you exclude such a huge bloc of voting shares even if you only got a small percentage of votes?

My personal opinion is that Motorola should spin off Mobile Devices. I really don't see a profitable future in the business. Saturated markets, low profit margins, cheap competition, and inability to set pricing because of the wireless carriers who also are able to dictate which feature sets are enabled or not. But if they intend to stay in the business, they better be hiring the best product designers on the planet (steal them away from Apple if necessary) to come up with compelling products for consumers.

"...the Networks and Connected Home businesses ....What was the rationale for keeping them and jettisoning the Semiconductor business a few years ago?". Mobile Device business will continue grow in the next decade because it will grab market of today's laptop. Eventually mobile device will split into two businesses: mobile device manufacturer and mobile infrastructure/IT service. This is similar to computer. Network and connect home could be the core of mobile infrastructure and IT service. Another thing I can see in 10 years is what happened to IBM will happen to mobile business (From device manufacturing to service/solution provider).

I couldn't agree more on all 5 items of plan B. I have not seen the company's vision on how seamless mobility affects everyone's daily life. Some actions we shall do immediately: 1) work with major content application vendors to build applications for mobile phone; 2) break the centralized R&D (Lab or CTO) to a distributed structure so that engineers on the front line become part of the fundation of the innovation; 3) Work with opensource community closely to support opensource applications; 4) Push out phones with open IP connection; WIFI phone with browser/Voip/IM/email is a must for mass market; 5) Technical marketing/product research for eurp/asia. (Why we don't have good market share there? )

as a motorola employee, i pledge support to Eric in #1 item. Replace Ed Zander immediately. He has done nothing. He took over when Motorola was already getting its act together. He has miserably failed to get together a long term strategy for the company, managing the company on the NOW and not WHAT NEXT? principle. He is nothing but a good salesman, good gimmick artist and salesman can only talk they cant strategize..

All of us at YouChoose.net are excited to have Eric back with his "Motorola Plan B" campaign. He did a trend-setting job in building a grass-roots movement to force change at yahoo with his "Yahoo! Plan B" campaign earlier this year. It's great to see him use YouChoose to give the "little guy" a big voice! I look forward to his success with his MOT campaign.