Dell: one company, two CEO's: Michael Dell knew he couldn't manage alone. So he's struck a partnership with Kevin Rollins - related article: Dell on Dell's Future - Interview - Company Profile - Cover Story

Chief Executive, The, Nov, 2003 by William J. Holstein

At Dell Inc.'s headquarters on the northern outskirts of Austin, Michael Dell is standing in his office and looking at a feature that's rather unusual in a CEO suite. It's a glass wall, with a wide open, sliding glass door, leading into the office of President and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Rollins.

The two men joined their offices in this manner about a year ago. "I was running over to his office and he was running over to mine," says Dell, gesturing out the window to another section of the building where Rollins used to work. "So we said, 'Let's move one office.'"

Today, Dell and Rollins say they consider themselves to be co-CEOs, and that requires frequent, unfettered communications, even when speaking on personal calls. "I don't think we've ever closed the door," says Dell. "We might as well take this whole thing down."

Obviously, not all co-CEOs are created equal. Dell's name is on the building and the product, and he sits on the company's board of directors, which Rollins doesn't.

That might be enough to keep their shared leadership structure from going the way so many other co-CEO arrangements have gone at other companies--down in flames. Dell and Rollins say they are serious about making their collaboration work for the long haul. And they insist they are not trying to send a signal of impending change at the top. It's simply a story about how one entrepreneur realized he didn't have all the right skills to build his company into a multi-product, multi-geography powerhouse and brought in the talent he needed.

Today, all of Dell's business units and staff functions report to Rollins on a daily basis. If you wander through the cubicled-halls at Dell and look at the organizational charts scribbled on whiteboards, they show all functions reporting up to "MK" in a box--Michael and Kevin. It was Rollins who initiated an important effort to alter the company's culture in 1997, a campaign called "The Soul of Dell." It was Rollins who pushed to set a $60 billion annual sales target two years ago when the company was just half that size. And Rollins engineered Dell's alliance with storage technology king EMC to help Dell start cracking that market. That alliance is yielding more than $100 million in sales per quarter, according to industry sources.

No ego thing

One risk of shared leadership is that conflicting signals are transmitted down through the ranks. But the pair insist that though they do disagree, they are able to hash out better solutions than either one of them could come up with alone. "We have a very healthy yin and yang," says Rollins. Or as Crawford DelPrett, senior vice president at research firm International Data Corp., puts it, "[they're] kind of the left and right sides of the same brain."

"In some areas," adds Rollins, "Michael will go out on a limb, showing his entrepreneurial exuberance. He'll want to do a million things. He's a tremendous optimist. I generally end up being the pessimist in those situations. I'll say, 'No, no, no. Those are great things, but let's figure out the one or two we can really do.'"

But when it comes to finances, the roles are reversed. "I'll pick the big hairy goals," says Rollins. "Let's go out and double the size of the company." That's where Dell gets uncomfortable and tries to rein in his counterpart.

Because of its fluidity, the relationship between Dell and Rollins is difficult to diagram on a corporate org chart. Dell Human Resources chief Paul McKinnon, an organizational behaviorist, uses a football metaphor to describe how Michael Dell doesn't have an assigned role but floats in the backfield. "Michael plays free safety for the corporation," McKinnon says. "When he sees an area of concern, he goes in and investigates."

Joe Tutti, CEO of EMC, who first started working with Dell while attempting to steer Wang Computer out of distress, says the connection between Dell and Rollins is so seamless, he needs to communicate with only one of them to get information to both. "What breaks these kinds of relationships is where two individuals don't see the future the same, where there's a power struggle or where there's a problem over, 'Who gets the press?'" says Tucci. "But if you talk to Kevin and Michael, you know that they see the future the same way. There's no ego thing."

The 12-year age difference between the two also helps. It suggests that Rollins is not being positioned as a successor to Dell, which otherwise might generate friction. I'll be gone before he is," says Rollins.

In some senses, Dell and Rollins couldn't be more different. Dell dropped out of college to pursue his business in 1984; Rollins earned an MBA from Brigham Young and became a consultant with Bain & Co., specializing in logistics and operations. Dell is Jewish; Rollins is Mormon. Dell, although graying slightly at the temples, is still baby-faced at 38. Rollins is a trim and cerebral 50.

One trait they share is a robust appetite for family and outside activities. Dell has four children; so does Rollins. Dell gets home for family dinner and the kids' soccer games. He makes time to go horseback riding--and then hobbles around on crutches after one fresh incident in which "a horse fell on my leg."