Charles Wohlstetter, Contel Corp.

• Position: Column

Charles Wohlstetter, Contel Corp.

I am probably only a minor league curmudgeon. But the general definition of curmudgeon - someone who is crusty, irritable, and mean-spirited - is all wrong. Actually, a curmudgeon is somebody who detests hypocrisy and punishes it where he sees it - and tends to say it in ways that startle people. People know what I think. I'm upfront. I believe that everybody has the right to make a damn fool of themselves. Most people just overplay their hand and get carried away. When that happens, I like to be around.

I have large questions about how people construct their boards. The usual 1940s, '50s, '60s board, and even into the '70s, were fellows in marvelous double-breasted blue suits with gray hair who nodded in accord and synchronization with the chairman. You got the chairman of this, the chairman of that, and the chairman of the other. If you look at an American Telephone, almost forever they've had the chairman of Metropolitan Life, the chairman of U.S. Steel, the chairman of Mobil Oil, and a whole group of people like that - good fellows all, I'm sure, but what the hell they know about the communications business escapes me. I don't know that a CEO, who himself has to be a leader, is helped at all by 19 chiefs.

I suspect that my own board is one of the few that makes any sense, at least to me. I have a board that you will find in very few corporations.

We're a high technology business - higher than anybody dreams. I have a technology committee of the board, and on that committee are Jim McDonald, our chief scientist; Robert Long, the former commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, a graduate of Annapolis who is a brilliant strategist and engineer; and Howard Frank, the chairman of a very good software company. They judge the technological problems that are brought for funding. If you don't have that kind of intelligence on the board, people can sell you a piece of cake.

I remember the first business that I started was in what would today be a very low-tech business. We manufactured subfractional horsepower motors during the war. It was my first intimate contact with engineers, and I found an amazing thing. Every engineer with whom I spoke thought he was Steinmetz - in fact, assured me that he was school at NYU and studied electrical engineering. Then I found out they were not Steinmetz, they were Steinberg - entirely different.

In one year we built as many as 52 buildings. I believe that's being in the real...