Activist: Motorola Changes Not Enough

That's why all fellow Motorola shareholders should vote "withhold" for directors Lewent, Negroponte, Scott and John White. They should also vote "for" the three shareholder proposal on say-on-pay, recouping unearned management bonuses and new corporate standards at Motorola. In doing so, they'll embarrass the old guard into leaving.

Voting "against" directors does have an impact. I urged institutional and retail shareholders to vote against several of Yahoo!'s (YHOO Quote) directors last June (here's one of my YouTube political-style campaign ads). Thanks also to the company's poor performance, high executive compensation and support from some of the proxy advisory firms, several Yahoo! directors received over 35% "against" votes. Six days later, Terry Semel resigned as CEO.

Motorola shareholders should be upset at this company's performance. But Icahn's involvement is not a cure-all. It would be easy to be a free rider as a shareholder and think that you can leave it to Icahn to fix things. That's not enough. Many more changes need to be made at the board-level and within this company. Get out and vote.