Michael Ruettgers' office credenza was stacked high with checks to pay off bills his company, EMC, (EMC) owed.

But the new executive wasn't rushing to the post office. It was the late 1980s, and his computer storage company was running low on borrowed money.

"Periodically, my assistant would come in and say, 'Well, you know so-and-so has been on the phone again and again and again,' " said Ruettgers, who was then executive vice president of operations and customer service. "I would say, 'All right. Well, find his check and send it out to him.' "

The company was trying to salvage cash and its reputation after shipping faulty products. In a bold move, Ruettgers guaranteed full-part replacements — even if the product was working fine.

That wasn't a cheap way out. The company, which did $123 million in sales in 1988, would burn through all but $3 million of its bank loans to keep the company humming.

But the plan worked. Customers stuck with EMC, and the company escaped perhaps its darkest days.

Ruettgers' willingness to make tough choices helped him make EMC a leader in the digital storage market. He wasn't afraid to offend people or take risks. He also had a keen ability to see customer trends and motivate employees.

"He was a tough, focused, aggressive competitor," said Ed Zander, chief executive of Motorola, (MOT) who as Sun Microsystems' (SUNW) president in the 1990s competed against Ruettgers.

Ruettgers, who had held positions at other technology businesses, became president in fall of 1989 and CEO in 1992.

He led the company until 2001 before becoming executive chairman until late 2003. He shifted to simply chairman until late 2005. Now he's senior adviser to the EMC board and management.

Under his leadership, EMC was one of the best-performing stocks of the 1990s, with an astounding gain of roughly 81,000%. In '99 EMC had sales of almost $7 billion and produced about $1 billion in earnings.

"He's a very strategic thinker," said Gabe Schmergel, who from 1999 to 2003 served on the board of directors of health sciences and photonics company PerkinElmer (PKI) with Ruettgers. "When he would speak, we would listen."

The technology firm, like most, saw its stock slide in 2000 in the midst of the Nasdaq crash. But the company's broader line has helped its stock more than triple since its low point in 2002. Its market capitalization is over $30 billion.

EMC provides a wide range of storage boxes that hold the exploding amount of information generated by companies, institutions and individuals around the world. Earlier this decade the company began to expand into more software via acquisitions that better manage and use the raw data — along with storage devices themselves. The company is now led by chairman and chief executive Joseph Tucci.

The Hopkinton, Mass., company, founded in 1979, made chip-based memory products for large computer systems, called minicomputers, popular in the '80s at corporations. It began to sell higher-end disk-based storage devices in the latter part of the '80s to expand its sales.

It was a solid, growing business, but Richard Egan, EMC's co-founder, knew he needed help after the faulty products were shipped — and wooed Ruettgers to improve manufacturing. Egan, who was then CEO, shifted to chairman after Ruettgers moved into his slot.

Once he helped clean up that mess, Ruettgers looked to make arguably EMC's biggest bet: nixing most of EMC's minicomputer product line to focus on high-end storage for IBM, which had close to an 80% market share.

Ruettgers says EMC simply had to consolidate. The firm was handling too many product lines.

EMC was spending just $10 million a year for research and development vs. rivals' hundreds of millions. It didn't help that the money was spread among several product lines. So taking on just one competitor — even as big as IBM — was a better use of his limited resources, Ruettgers says.

By the mid-1990s, EMC had knocked off IBM as the No. 1 provider of high-end storage, says Robert Gray, an analyst with International Data Corp.

Ruettgers made more bets on new markets and acquisitions throughout his tenure. In 1995 he pushed EMC's storage boxes into the nonmainframe server arena. The storage products connected to different types of servers — based on a popular operating system called Linux — that were made by companies such as Sun and Hewlett-Packard. (HPQ)

Some wondered how it could work — or if it was worth the effort, given the success of the earlier products. But he pressed on. By the end of the decade the market made up more than half of EMC's sales.

Ruettgers' bravado gained results.

"Most of the computer companies thought storage was theirs," Zander said. "He proved storage could be a separate (company)."

Ruettgers says he was confident he could win because of his constant chats with customers. He'd make 400 to 600 visits a year with clients.

"You really get a sense of what it is they're trying to deal with," he said. "I always thought it was my responsibility to know customers well enough and our technology well enough . . . to make sure the products met their needs. Everybody talks about that, but our track record is pretty good."

Ruettgers was no cheerleader. Many would call him a tough boss, he says. That's fine by him; you can't be all dreams and no action.

Egan says Ruettgers used words sparingly. People knew what the CEO wanted. "After a while, you learn a nod, a wink mean different things," Egan said.

If that sounds like military leadership, there's a reason for that. Ruettgers' father was an Air Force pilot who had assignments in Japan, Turkey, Germany and the U.S.

His childhood gave Ruettgers a broad view of the world. He was born in 1942 in Muskogee, Okla., and moved 18 times by the time he was 21.

That honed his skills in dealing with people he didn't know. It also helped give him a broad view of the world. He saw the big picture.

Yet he wasn't always on the path to becoming a CEO. He had to fight off his personal failings.

After high school, he entered the University of California, Los Angeles. Instead of studying enough, he played bridge and hit the beach.

The cost was a 1.5 grade-point average. UCLA sent him packing.

It was a wake-up call. He enrolled in a small college near Olympia, Wash., called St. Martin's and got serious about learning. There he discovered he wanted to be an executive. He transferred to Idaho State University, went on to Harvard Business School and landed a job at Raytheon. (RTN) He was on his way.

"I often call him 'Cool Hand Luke,' " Egan said. "He was just a solid, solid guy."

BY BRIAN WOMACK