“My idea was that as soon as I graduated, I would become a designer in a major company”, recalls Pistorio, “I looked at Olivetti, the most important electronic company in Italy, at Siemens and at Marelli - they were all looking for engineers. Demand was far outstripping the offers. Every graduate was getting 20 invitations for interview. I had ten interviews and got ten offers.”
“My intention was to accept the offer of Olivetti but, quite by accident, I had known a gentleman who was the representative of the Motorola agent in Italy. He said: 'You are so extrovert you would be a good salesman'. He was looking for a salesman in Turin who would sell Motorola products."
"I told him I wanted to be a designer and did not want to be a salesman”, remembers Pistorio, “he was trying to persuade me this would be a good match with my character, and finally he says to me: 'What is the offer from Olivetti?' and I said '120,000 lira a month', and he said: 'I'll offer you 150,000 lira a month'".
"So in March 1963, I took the job of a salesman. I did not have a driving licence so I started going around on a bicycle. Sometimes I took the tram. This was the way it started for about six to eight months. Then I took a driving licence and bought a third hand car - an Opel - sometimes you had to push it."
Another hindrance was that he was not allowed to telephone or even telex Motorola because of the expense. The only contact he was allowed with the company was by mail. "You'd send a letter, and one month later you got the answer - it might even be a price quotation for a customer!"
Nonetheless he loved the job and can still reel off the part numbers of the early 1960s Motorola product portfolio: "The diodes - the 401 and 404, the famous germanium power transistors - the 173 and 174, the 1613 and 1711, the 2218 and 2222".
Asked if the American company culture came as a shock, Pistorio replies: "For me? No. I fit very well in the American culture, I found it very easy, and I think my American colleagues found me very easy. I'm a very basic person, and I think Americans are basic people and like basic people - they think that if you are performing, you are a good man; that if you are not performing you are no good. I am the same. So I think it was an easy fit."
“I think values like honouring what you commit to do, not changing your mind, being at ease with yourself, having business integrity in the broad sense are essential”, says Pistorio, “I value these things in the American culture, and they are values which I have been adopting myself all my life."
"My 17 years at Motorola were very good. They taught me a lot. I learnt to be a manager coping with the human side of the Italian environment and the European environment, while also coping with the American rigour of business practicality”, says Pistorio, “and this, in the end, is my managerial style - marrying American rigour with a good sensibility for people."
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