Texan billionaire thrives on challenging convention

"Challenge conventional thinking" is the motto prominently displayed on the website of Perot Systems Corporation and this is precisely what the company's chairman and chief executive H Ross Perot does best.

The maverick Texan billionaire, best known for joining the US presidential race in 1992 when he secured 19 per cent of the vote, does not tend to the orthodox.

His Dallas-based information technology services company, which was established 10 years ago and reported sales of more than $780 million last year, casts aside the traditional model of offering clients "pre-packaged one-size-fits-all solutions". Instead, it aims to offer clients original solutions, options and flexibility.

The company, which has more than 5,600 employees worldwide, is neither run nor recruits in conventional fashion either.

Mr Perot likes to maintain a close relationship with clients who can call him 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This also helps to keep staff on their toes because they know that any dissatisfied client can pick up the telephone and call the boss.

His door is also open to employees with creative ideas, particularly young people who he believes are more likely to think outside the conventional framework.

"All the creative ideas which have made my company successful came from other people," he says. "I eat by myself in the cafeteria every day at noon. There is a clear understanding that if you have an idea you can come and talk to me."

In Ireland to launch a joint venture with Bank of Ireland and to establish a separate Perot Systems office in Dublin, Mr Perot was taking advantage of his visit to meet not just politicians but the people who will be working for him. "It's all about people," he says. "You manage inventory but you lead people. People are not a commodity."

Mr Perot believes the selection of staff and training are very important and spends at least one day a week interviewing new staff, including every new systems engineer joining the company.

Those applying to Perot Systems will find that a college degree is not necessary while leadership skills shown in the Boy Scouts could count for something.

If his business philosophy is less than traditional, Mr Perot's own life can scarcely be described as conventional either. The son of a successful cotton broker in Texarkana on the Texas-Arkansas border, Mr Perot joined IBM as a salesman in 1956, after a spell in the Navy. By 1962, the year he left to set up his own company EDS with $1,000, he had filled his annual sales quota by the third week in January.

Electronic Data Systems, which was established to help other companies streamline their computer systems, pioneered the outsourcing of technology and made Mr Perot's fortune.

"I created this segment of the industry," he says. "When we first started people didn't know if we were a company or a disease." However, the company grew rapidly and in 1984, EDS was sold to General Motors for $2.5 billion.

The extra-curricular activities of the diminutive Texan sound better-suited to Rambo than to your average businessman.

In 1969, he attempted to fly Christmas dinners and medicines to US prisoners of war in Vietnam.

A decade later, he organised a team of commandos, including the famous Vietnam war veteran Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons, to spring two of his employees taken prisoner in Iran, a feat that later became the subject of a best-selling novel.

Frustration with US politics, which he describes as "part illusion, part magic act" were behind the popular groundswell of support which saw him become a surprise third candidate in the 1992 presidential contest between Bill Clinton and George Bush.

Balancing the budget and the $4 trillion US budget deficit were particular bugbears of a man who pays a lot of attention to cost effectiveness programmes within his own company.

Mr Perot believes the problems facing the US economy are the same as the ones he has been talking about for the last six years. He dismisses what he describes as the "hoo-ha" surrounding the current US budget surplus, saying it was always known that the budget would move into the black around now.

But he says the US faces huge deficits around 2030 because of the growing ageing population and the present social security system.

"The time to deal with it is now and it is very important that we do. Otherwise, we will be the first generation not to leave our children a better country," he says.

The social security system, which was designed at a time when there were some 40 people at work for every retiree, needs to be changed to cope with an environment where there are only three workers for every retired person, a figure which is likely to fall to two before long.

But Mr Perot has no plans to return to the political fray, noting that he will be 70 when the next US presidential elections are held. However, he plans to stay "busy in business" and, at 68, has no plans to retire or slow down.

"If you read Genesis you will see Noah was 450 years old when he built the Ark. I'm just a boy," he says in his soft, Southern drawl.