Joe Eckroth says that he was instrumental in Mattel’s success long before he became the toy company’s CIO in August 2000. He estimates that over the years he has bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of Barbie dolls for his girls, now ages 11 and 16.

Eckroth’s joke contains more than a grain of truth. Long before he joined the troubled company, Eckroth was honing the management skills -- an ability to make tough decisions coupled with an awareness of the need to take care of people -- that have made him a key player in the attempted turnaround of Mattel, the world’s largest toy company.

"Joe is that unique combination of tough-minded and tender," says Chairman and CEO Bob Eckert, who made Eckroth his first new hire after taking the reins in May 2000. "He makes decisions very clearly, and he’s not at all soft when it comes to what needs to be done. But he is soft in understanding situations from an individual employee’s point of view."

Eckroth came to Mattel from that cradle of CIOs, General Electric. When a headhunter called him two years ago about the Mattel opening, both the products and problems piqued Eckroth’s interest. "I’m a big kid, and this was a product I could totally relate to," laughs Eckroth, who is 43. But the company had as many troubles as toys -- it was losing market share, gross margins and profitability were declining, overhead expenses were rising, the stock price and morale were at all-time lows, and an ill-advised acquisition was dragging the company further under.

But after a trip to the company’s El Segundo, Calif., headquarters to meet with Eckert, Eckroth decided that he was up for the challenge. "What I saw was an extremely creative, fast-paced company in a world I had never played in before," he says. "It was exciting." Eckert sweetened the deal with a few collector’s edition Barbies, board games and Matchbox cars for him to take home, and Eckroth became the new CEO’s right-hand man.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be...

When Eckroth began his career as an engineer, his thoughts weren’t so much on what he wanted to be but who. After receiving an MBA from Pepperdine University in 1994, he worked in operations at Los Angeles-based Northrop Aircraft (now Northrop Grumman). He had no immediate plans to get into IT or even a long-term goal of climbing the corporate ladder. "I didn’t go in saying, ’Hey, I want to be a top executive.’ I went in excited about a new job," Eckroth explains. "But as I moved through jobs, I started saying, ’OK, I want to be that person.’" Among those people was his first boss, Vice President of Operations Marion McCue. "I loved him," says Eckroth. "He was a tough manager, but he was always a values-based manager. He cared about the people that worked for him."