The Brevard Technical Journal

Embracing Change
Solectron executive rolls with company's evolving names

By Anne Straub
Brevard Technical Journal

To those who don't know better, Bill Cunningham's resume might look like that of a job hopper.

Recruited to join Advanced Circuits in West Melbourne in 1995, he soon went to work for Johnson Matthey Electronic Assembly Services. Then came a stint at Allied Signal, followed by a move to Honeywell. Less than a year later, Cunningham was at C-MAC, and now, as of December, he has settled at Solectron.

At a glance, he would seem the type who's ready to jump to a new firm at any moment. A closer look, however, shows that Cunningham never left the helm of the contract manufacturer he joined seven years ago: It's just that the company changes owners faster than the facilities manager can install new signage.

"I've been thinking of getting a T-shirt with all the logos on it," Cunningham joked about his long list of employers. At a recent business roundtable, all the other participants knew him - but each by a different company name.

Despite the changes, the company has held its course. "It's sort of funny, but we've never missed a beat," Cunningham said.

His key to managing the transitions is to keep the company's focus clear: "Make sure whatever is going on around you, that you satisfy your customers," he said.

But more than survive change, Cunningham embraces it. Each new owner, he said, must have something to offer or it wouldn't be a successful company. And rather than trying to observe a company's workings from afar, Cunningham gets an inside look at management systems with every new company that takes ownership.

"You can read all the journals in the world about what companies do, but when you live through it, you learn so much more," he said. "We're going to take a good idea, wherever it comes from."

That's a good attitude to have when guiding a workforce through transition, said Elizabeth Ann Kovacs, president of the Association of Management Consulting Firms in New York.

People don't like change, so a manager must help them understand the reasons for the change. "He has to help them see where it's going to benefit them," she said. Communication is important, but it's the content that's key. A good leader will have a vision and be able to show people that the change is good for them and for the company.

"People need to feel part of the new system and know there's a place for them," she said.

That's important to Cunningham as well. He describes part of his philosophy as employee development, or as he explains it, helping people avoid getting pegged into a small box. That's different from the lip service that a lot of companies pay to the concept of empowerment. "They talk about it a lot, but at the end of the day, there are a lot of controls on people that prevent it from happening," he said. "I think we do a better job than most at giving people the opportunity to acquire the tools they need to succeed."

Cunningham had a chance to demonstrate his commitment to individual employees when working at a pressure instruments manufacturer in Hastings, Neb. A television news program asked to interview Cunningham about the NAFTA trade policy controversy, and he agreed on one condition: He'd be allowed to give a pitch for some employees who recently had been laid off. "We placed about half of them in about a week," he said.

That general manager position was Cunningham's first foray out of the defense world. It was 1993, defense spending was falling, and savvy managers were looking for commercial experience.

Previously, Cunningham had worked for Gould Electronics in Baltimore for 14 years, including a two-year stint at the corporate office in Chicago. He also worked for Westinghouse, building reactors for Navy vessels. That work experience was sandwiched between his degrees: The son of a draftsman, Cunningham settled early on an engineering career, earning a industrial engineering degree from Purdue University. Four years later, he went back to school, this time to the University of Michigan for an MBA.

He finds his current place at the contract manufacturer a good fit. "I'm a manufacturing guy first," he said. "I like to build something. At the end of the day, I don't want to play with paper. I want to be part of building something that somebody uses."

The West Melbourne operation started as Targ-It-Tronics when it was founded by two entrepreneurs in the late 1980s. They built the business by making flexible printed circuit assemblies then sold it to Advanced Circuits in 1993.

Today, the company makes electronics for telecommunications manufacturers. Products include parts of assemblies for consumer products, Internet appliances and products that go into the infrastructure of wireless and optical systems. Operations include a manufacturing facility in Mexico.

The local plant has remained fairly autonomous and therefore easy for subsequent owners to assimilate, Cunningham said. Though the company doesn't release financial data, he characterizes it as a $100 million business. Like most companies that serve the telecommunications industry, it has had a bad year and Cunningham expects the current slow recovery to gain momentum next year.

Outside work, Cunningham spends time with his wife, Patricia, and sons, Ben, 19; Sean, 18; and Scott, 16. Though he's been an executive for years, Cunningham bucked convention and only recently took up golf. Before now, his time was taken up with his sons' athletic endeavors. They're growing up, but Cunningham is determined not to lose touch. "My best golfing buddy is my youngest son," he said.