Five Minutes with John Edwardson, ’72

The Path to the Top

Like a lot of MBA students, John Edwardson had his eye on the corner office from the start. Now the CEO of CDW Corporation, he has spent years at the top of such firms as United Airlines. “I happened to be at the right place at the right time more than once,” he said. “But I’ve been taken over twice and I’ve been fired once. I’ve had a number of new jobs just because I had to get a new job. So you never know why you get the opportunities you get.”

In 2001, Edwardson took the helm at CDW, replacing founding entrepreneur Michael Krasny.His first day on the job, Edwardson demonstrated his loyalty to 100 CDW managers by taking a sledgehammer to his laptop computer made by Dell, its biggest competitor. In 2002, he promised employees he would shave his head if they made third-quarter sales goals. “Despite the decline in the technology department,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported, “sales goals were met. And at a company event, Edwardson’s head was shaved.”

Five years after Edwardson was hired as CEO and chairman of the board, revenue increased from $3.8 billion to $6.3 billion, the kind of success that has earned him the 2006 Distinguished Corporate Alumni Award. “We’ve had reasonably good growth in a difficult industry,”he said.“The objective is to get to $10 billion in revenue by the end of 2008, to grow significantly above the market rate of growth, and to put more structure into the company without making it bureaucratic.”

Edwardson, ’72, has never shied away from big tasks. After earning his MBA, he went into commercial banking because GSB alumni suggested it as the path to becoming chief financial officer.“I’d heard from a number of them that the best way to become CFO was not to work your way up through a company, but to become either a commercial or an investment banker for a number of years, then leap into a more senior role in a company, and that worked very well for me,” he said.

After five years at The First National Bank in St. Paul, Minnesota, he joined Ferrellgas, one of the bank’s customers, as vice president and treasurer, the top financial job at the firm. “It was, in effect, the CFO job, but that title wasn’t used in 1977,” he said. Edwardson’s next position was with another bank customer, Northwest Airlines, which he joined as CFO in 1984 when he was 34 years old.

Edwardson was undaunted at the time, but now the recollection makes him shake his head. “I was such a cocksure person, I wasn’t the least bit scared. I knew that I knew better ways to do things. I thought when I was 28 I should have been the CEO of the company,”he said.“A few years ago, I called some of the guys I worked for who were then in their 60s and 70s, and I told them, ‘Thank you for putting up with me.’ I talked to one in St. Paul, and he said, ‘You know, you were a little self-confident and a little arrogant, but you were really good at what you did, so it was worth putting up with those other things. And you’ve learned a lot over the years, and you’re not nearly as hard to get along with as you were when you were 28.’

“I’ve been very lucky that I’ve had people who looked for what I did right instead of what I did wrong. I’ve tried to remember that over the years,” Edwardson said.

The ride was sometimes bumpy. As CFO for United Airlines Employee Acquisition Corporation, he guided the employees’ efforts to buy the airline; an agreement was reached but employees failed to raise funds, and the bid failed. Edwardson’s next job was executive vice president and CFO at Ameritech; after nearly four years, he was tapped a second time by United employees to help them purchase the company, this time successfully.

After four years at United as president and chief operating officer, he was named CEO by the board of directors, but that appointment was vetoed by the airline’s labor unions. “I wouldn’t give them the contract they wanted because I felt it would bankrupt the company,” he said.

Edwardson then joined Burns International Services, a company that provides security guards for hire.“It was a troubled company, and I was hired by the board of directors and Merrill Lynch Equity Partners,which owned 44 percent, to fix the company and sell it as soon as possible.We were able to do that in 17 months. My job was to eliminate my job.”

Looking for his next position, he discovered that CDW founder and CEO Michael Krasny was ready to turn over the reins. At first, Krasny said he planned to stay active in the company’s management. When he changed his mind, Edwardson agreed to take on the top job.“We were able to work out something that has worked well for both of us,” he said.

Throughout his career, Edwardson has seen himself as a coach.“I look at the job as more of a teaching job and less of a decision-making job,” he said. “The more senior position I’ve been in, the fewer decisions I make.As a leader, you have some decisions that only you can make. But you’re much better off if you can get the people who report to you to make decisions. They feel better about what they’re doing, and they work harder to make sure their decision is the right one.”

—Patricia Houlihan