New
Leadership at EDS: TPI Viewpoint
A good move for EDS is TPI's opinion on the recent executive leadership appointments of John Ladaga, Tom Egan, and Steve Heidt to new roles in the EDS Executive Leadership team. John Ladaga assumes the role of vice president and general manager, Latin America, Tom Egan will now lead Global Service Delivery for the Americas, and Steve Heidt takes over the role of vice president of Operations, previously held by Tom Egan.
These changes had some domino effect caused by Ladaga
filling the Latin American general manager role vacated by the retirement of
Micael Ciment, Egan assuming a role that includes Ladaga's previous
responsibilities, and Heidt assuming Egan's previous role. The result is
three very strong and experienced leaders placed in key roles in the company, which
should lead to a more integrated and effective executive team.
One of
EDS' historical strengths has been the heritage of many of its leaders having
grown up in the business, and truly understanding the company, its services,
and its business model. Ladaga, Egan and Heidt all come from this mold. They
began at the ground level of the company and worked their way up, are extremely
well-respected inside EDS, and more importantly, inside the service delivery
portion of the company. They understand global service delivery, as well as
client-focused service.
We think the peer leadership team of Tom Egan and Steve
Heidt, who together have a significant portion of the delivery responsibility
of the company, will mesh extremely well. Heidt began in the depths of
the global IT infrastructure delivery arm of EDS and has been continually
tapped during his career to take on key technical leadership as well as strategic
roles. Egan's new organization is responsible for working with and leveraging
the resources directed by Heidt, and Egan's intimate familiarity with this
organization (Heidt assumes the role from Egan) will allow Egan to more
effectively integrate Global Service Delivery for the
John
Ladaga has a successful background in business development and business
management inside of EDS in addition to true service delivery experience. This
breadth of experience will serve him well in his new role as general manager of
Ron
Rittenmeyer, the Chief Operating Officer, was clearly the architect of these
moves. He is a no-nonsense, results oriented executive who has been with EDS
for a year — enough time for him to learn the company, its strengths and
weaknesses. His stated intention is to fill key leadership roles by leveraging
both internal candidates as well as through EDS’ trend over the past few years
of bringing in outside talent. We think
it is significant that he identified EDS veterans for
all three of these positions. We believe these moves will be strongly supported
by the rank-and-file EDS employees, many of whom know these three well. That is
important. Because as with any service company, at the end of the day it is the
employees who make the difference.