Business Insight Zone

Xerox has declared its first quarterly dividend since the dark days of 2001.

Most of us Hoover’s editors can’t help but develop some favorites among the companies we cover. Xerox is one of mine, because it embodies several things that I find compelling:

• It’s proof-positive that a big, legacy-burdened company with a broken business model can sometimes be fixed. (This is something that Alan Mulally at Ford seems to grasp — and a good thing, too.)
• Instead of reaching outside the company for an overcompensated big-name CEO to play savior, the Xerox board tapped an insider — Anne Mulcahy — who already knew the Xerox culture inside and out, but who also had the guts to change what needed changing.
• As we’ve discussed before, Mulcahy and the Xerox board have set up a clear succession plan so that, when Mulcahy is done, Ursula Burns is fully prepared to take over.
• The company’s recovery from near-disaster several years ago has, in many ways, been resolutely un-sexy. It’s been mostly about building methodical advantages over time.

Many other companies in trouble could take a lesson here.

So why only two-and-a-half cheers? Because I’m going to save the full three cheers for the day — not to far from now, I’d bet — when Xerox is on such a good course that any talk about its restructuring dwindles away into the mists of history.

Category: Management, Technology