William Burgess is not sure how he came to be ambitious, but IBM's managing director in Ireland was never in doubt about his objectives when he joined the firm in 1968. "I always had ambitions to manage. I wanted to run the company from day one," he says.
Fast-forward 31 years and Burgess - who joined the US giant as a young Trinity College graduate in economics and engineering - has been at the helm of the firm's Irish operation since 1991.
While the Dubliner now leads IBM in the middle of an expansion phase which will see employment with the firm reach about 5,000 in 2001, his early days in the job were much less positive.
IBM was struggling internationally and it shed about 30 per cent of its Irish workforce. "When I took over there were a lot of difficulties. At that time we were a company of 500-600 people. And we went through a period of downsizing. I have to say it was a very difficult time."
Burgess, who had just taken over as managing director, agrees that his long career in IBM's technical and sales divisions prior to his appointment as boss meant that the difficulties were compounded.
"We came through that really well," he says now. "A lot of people took advantage of early retirement. It was difficult but we managed to do it. There's been quite a big turnaround. There's been huge expansion in the last three years in particular."
It was 1996 that was the turnaround year. The firm established a sales and support centre in Blanchardstown, west Co Dublin, which now employs over 1,000 workers. Sales, marketing and technical support services offered by the centre serve both Europe and the US. In 1996 too, IBM reached agreement with IDA Ireland to establish a technology campus in Mulhuddart, also in west Co Dublin, at which it has four interconnected manufacturing divisions. Almost 2,000 workers are employed at this plant, which extends to some 750,000 sq ft.
An additional 130 jobs will be created when IBM's wholly-owned subsidiary Lotus establishes a European technical support base at the Ballycoolin estate in Blanchardstown. Others are employed at IBM's Irish HQ in central Dublin and at its treasury division in the IFSC.
After 2001, Mr Burgess sees consolidation rather than growth as the top priority. "What I would like to see would be that we would not necessarily increase our presence here, but that we ensure that the portfolio that we have here evolves and remains strategic in nature."
He says the company has changed radically since its difficult days in the early 1990s. "There's been a huge acceleration in terms of advances in technology. The coming together of information and communications technologies has been a powerful force in terms of what companies like IBM now offer their customers.
"Whereas 10 years ago our business would have been predominantly hardware and to some extent software, we're now in the business of providing business solutions. The whole mix of the business now is very different."
Given IBM's move into consultancy and e-business, hardware and software are now just parts of a portfolio of services on offer to clients. Burgess says e-business is broader than e-commerce, which takes place mainly within firms. "E-business is about fundamentally looking at what the new technologies will allow you to do, allowing you, demanding of you to reinvent yourself."
He argues that both e-business and e-commerce are crucial to IBM and to companies in general. "This is a fundamental change. It's something as fundamental as the Industrial Revolution. But this thing is happening maybe 10 or 20 times faster. The world of e-business and e-commerce allows to fundamentally change how we do these things. This actually is about a total re-engineering.
"This environment rapidly means that your competition is global. So there are huge opportunities and huge threats.
"Anybody who thinks they can ignore it, will ignore it at their peril. This will be very critical. There has to be a better understanding at senior executive level in companies in this country on just what this digital revolution is all about."
IBM's net earnings in the July-September quarter rose to $1.8 billion this year (€1.8 billion), up from $1.5 billion in the same period in 1998, although the company described the quarter as "decidedly mixed".
Burgess is reluctant to be drawn on the specifics of IBM's current position, but he attributes some of the difficulty to a downturn in demand for mainframe computers as companies focus on the Y2K issue. "When we had mixed results in the last quarter, in the main we began to see some impact on the hardware side of the business. And really that is as people were moving into change around the Y2K question. At the time it was stated by the company that we did see this as something that would have an impact in the fourth quarter and into the early part of next year."
Of the Irish economy in general, he sees the growth continuing, but at a lesser rate. "Certainly in the short to medium-term, all the statistics indicate that we'll be in for some kind of soft landing - I don't think we can sustain these kind of growth rates forever. I think everything seems to be tracking quite well.
"There's a lot more confidence about now. Management are more confident and I think our ability in this country to do things well and run businesses well has always been there. This boom means we can prove it.
"Management practice in this country has improved considerably. It's probably through better education. We do watch and see how other people do things."
He agrees with a suggestion that the State's small size has been a particular advantage in fostering growth and change. "This is something that is always remarked on [by foreign business people] - the absolutely short and very tight effective links between government, business, the unions and the whole social partnership and education. Everything is connected. This is not something that is experienced elsewhere and it is a function of size."
Burgess acknowledges that the climate was not always so benign, stating that the changes wrought since the early 1980s came out of a "real need". "Back in the early 1980s this country was in serious trouble. If you looked at it as a business, you wouldn't invest in it. There was a need to grapple with it. A lot comes out of adversity."
Burgess sees IBM's difficulties in the early 1990s in a similar light. "You get very strong when you've had a bad time. When you have success, you do remember those times. When one is at one's most successful, actually one is at one's most vulnerable.
"If I were to track the success of this country in a very crude way, there were brave decisions made in terms of saying: `One of the things we have is a lot of bright young people - let's really crank up the education system.' That decision alone was an incredibly important thing in terms of attracting all the industry here that we have."
Reflecting on the tightening in the labour market, Burgess says the current generation of graduates have not had the benefit of character-building fostered by adversity. "It is a good thing to remember that times were tough. Things didn't come easy and they don't come easy."
The return from increased investment in third-level education will not be felt for two or three years, he argues. "There is a window that we have to get through in terms of skills availability. I certainly welcome the recent Government initiative which is looking at formally getting work visas in place against specific skills that are required."
He continues: "We should do something in terms of attracting people to come here in terms of a relocation allowance. A combination of those two things done quickly will help us through this window. As our own output increases we'll be able to turn off the tap."
Teleworking is a topic of particular interest to Mr Burgess, who is chairman of the Government's Teleworking Action Forum. Citing an internal project titled The World of Work in the New Millennium, he says a key factor in adapting to the changes implicit in e-business will be how the work is done internally. To this end, IBM is facilitating a "flexible" approach to work at within its senior management. This enables executives to stagger their hours, or work from home or from the company's sites throughout central and Co Dublin.
Burgess' other extra-curricular activities include heavy involvement in the Irish Management Institute, IBEC and the National Competitiveness Council. "It is important for us to be involved in terms of giving our views on what we believe is necessary to keep the success going for everybody, including ourselves."
Although Burgess' primary motivation is business, an engineer's mindset lurks in the background. "Over the years, the engineering discipline has been very helpful in terms of general management because you learn a lot of problem solving. When the wall is falling in, you don't panic." Is he interested in a political career? "No," he says without pausing to think.
