Lenovo exec: Shifting data center, other leaders are moves to ‘optimize talent’

Emilio Ghilardi, a relative newcomer himself to top management ranks at Lenovo, says the management shifts and additions disclosed Thursday are designed to “best optimize” the tech giant’s internal talent and at the same time bring in new players.

For example, long-time Lenovo veteran Gerry Smith is no longer head of the data center/server business that’s based in RTP nearly Lenovo’s main Morrisville campus. But rather than a demotion, Ghilardi said Smith is being moved to focus on the entire supply chain for Lenoro products. That not only includes servers and PCs but smartphones. Smith, who joined Lenovo in 2006 and has held numerous senior roles, has a long history of supply chain experience dating back to his pre-Lenovo career days.

“We continue to try to best to optimize the leadership and experience within Lenovo,” Ghilardi, head of Lenovo for North America, told WRAL TechWire.

“I realize that change creates some uncertainty,” he added but stressed that the technology industry “continues to go through an evolution and is “changing even more.” He also said management moves are “cyclical” as Lenovo itself changes. Since acquiring IBM’s x86 server business and Google Motorola Mobility two years ago, the company has gone through several reorganizations, numerous changes in management and rounds of layoffs – the most recent coming in September.

However, Ghilardi noted that Lenovo “continues to hire” in the Triangle and now has some 3,200 employees in North Carolina.

Movie, not a still image

In his view, Ghilardi said one way to view Lenovo and its leadership not as a “picture” but “as a movie” where the picture changes.

A criticism of Lenovo’s server business, which reported a decline in quarterly sales year-over-year but improvement from the last quarter, has been its supply chain. Ghilardi said Smith had led the way in resolving those issues and was “absolutely” the best person to improve the supply chain across all Lenovo product lines.

Replacing Smith as head of the Data Server Group, which is responsible for server sales and related services, is Kirk Skaugen, a former executive at Intel.

The hiring of Skaugen is an important addition to Lenovo’s core management, Ghilardi pointed out. He praised Skaugen as a talented executive at Intel “which is at the core of technology” development and said his hire is an example of “continuing effort” to remain at the forefront of recruiting top talent.

Lenovo also named a new leader for its struggling mobile business as well as a new chief legal officer and chief technology officer in a series of executive appointments.

Vision remains

One thing that’s not changing is Lenovo’s overall vision of providing a soup-to-nuts menu for technology, from smartphones to the Internet of Things, software, servers and related services, and PCs where it continues to lead the world in sales.

“The key part is that the mission remains,” he explained but acknowledged: “It’s tough. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes knowledge.

“No one has a crystal ball about what things will be like six months from now.”