Table steaks

I remember vividly the time I had lunch with Alltel chief executive officer Scott Ford. It was in a small private dining room down the hall from his 12^th-floor office in Little Rock. We were served heaping piles of barbecued meat impossible to eat in one sitting. It was September 2001. At the time, Alltel was trying to pressure another rural telco, CenturyTel, to merge with it. I was trying to eat and take notes at the same time.

Given all the strategic benefits Ford could see in an Alltel/CenturyTel acquisition, I asked him if he would still be able to walk away from the deal if the price became too high. He assured me he could, and, as we were then in the midst of the telecom collapse, he pointed out that some of the most important decisions Alltel had made as a company were the things it decided not to do. “The only way you can grow a business through acquisition and have it be profitable is if you don't fall in love,” Ford said.

Nortel Networks’ CEO Mike Zafirovksi seems to have proved this week that he knows that lesson as well. Whatever his ambitions for Nortel’s enterprise business, he was not going to pay a lot for that muffler. And he appears to have walked away from a bidding war with private equity firms for enterprise telephony equipment vendor Avaya. Today analysts are saying he made the right move.

Kenny Rogers said you’ve got to know when to walk away and when to run. And he’s been married five times, so I think he knows what he’s talking about.

As for Alltel, they never convinced CenturyTel to merge. Instead, the company splintered into two and, like Avaya, was bought by private equity firms last month. Still, I took Ford’s words to heart. Knowing I could never eat three pounds of brisket in an hour, I left a lot of meat on the table that day back in 2001. I knew my limitations and the consequences of ignoring them. And I have never regretted my decision once.

E-mail me at ed.gubbins@penton.com.