Michael Jordan's Weblog

It's communication time within the walls of Sun Micro: Earnings announcement, Spring Leadership Conference, even my own staff meeting was this week. We've got lots to say at the upcoming NC05Q2 on May 3 -- tune in!

(As an aside, the NC05Q2 event is being held live in Washington, DC, where I once lived. And...speaking of tuning in, it's worth mentioning that The Tune Inn was my primary hangout when I lived in DC. Mmmmmm....burgers and pitchers. The restaurant is still cool in that it's still a dive, but it was never the same once they replaced the jukebox and started accepting credit cards. If you go, send me a digital pic for this blog.)

Communications is why we started this blog-thing. (In fact, the team that created it won an award at the above-mentioned Leadership Conference.) We have always believed in open systems and competing on implementation. Blogs are one of our latest open systems (not to mention plans to open Solaris. We believe in free market forces (and we live with the fluctuation inherent in free markets).

Our Spring and Fall Leadership Conferences are important events for both development and alignment. We get a pretty consistent flow of information from the top of the company as it is, but the focus that a bi-annual event drives creates a lot of perspective and context.

If you are a leader, it's your job to communicate. Tell your folks what's going on, where you are going. Then tell them again. Listen. One of my priorities right now is to work with my team to develop the performance measurement layer of our management system. Not a day goes by where I don't talk to people involved in this work about the importance of simple metrics that represent the value that we add to our customers.

If you're not asking about it, talking about it, getting ideas from others, you're not going to get it done because there are just too many priorities competing for resources.