The last two times Tellabs looked to replace its CEO, the Illinois-based telecom equipment maker brought in veteran talent from the outside in Richard Notebaert and Krish Prabu, but this week, the company instead chose a man who is in many ways already the public face of Tellabs in Rob Pullen, a 23-year veteran Tellabs employee.

“Rob kind of stood out as the guy that had all of the background appropriate,” said Tellabs Chairman Michael Birck, who has known Pullen throughout his career. “He knows this company inside and out, knows our customers, knows the industry we are a part of and a lot of history that this company is a part of.”

Pullen admitted in an interview today that, since he’s already familiar with the company, he does expect to hit the ground running but won’t be making sweeping changes in the plans already in place to restructure Tellabs.

“I understand the business, the customers and the organizations within Tellabs, so I should hit the ground running,” Pullen said. “But I am in this for the long-haul so it’s important to get the right strategy in place, including the right structure and the right approach to market.”

To do that, he said, Pullen will be engaged in conversations with Tellabs’ customers and suppliers, as well as internal discussions and based on those, he expects to update Tellabs’ strategy going forward – a strategy Pullen said is focused at growth.

“I will be looking for growth opportunities, from multiple places,” Pullen said. “One place is to leverage existing customers to find new opportunities. It isn’t a far-reaching stretch if we have an existing customer for data switches to go over and sell that same customer on professional services.”

Other possible areas of growth include extensions to existing technologies – Pullen cited the recently announced 40 Gigabit per second technology on the Tellabs 7100 ROADM [reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexers] which can be used via in-service upgrades – and broader marketing of currently successful solutions such as use of the Tellabs 8600 for wireless backhaul.

“The biggest challenge going forward will be reducing expenses while trying to grow the business,” Pullen admitted. “That is one of our more difficult challenges. But I believe, if we define a well-articulated strategy, communicate it to our employees well and are relentless in its execution, people will rally around that and do their best.”

While some reduction in jobs may be inevitable, Pullen said he also will focus on other ways of cutting costs including tightening up the supply chain and redesigning engineering. He didn’t rule out future acquisitions or being the subject of an acquisition.

“The good thing is, now, we are in charge of our own destiny – we can grow business, seize opportunities and capitalize on them,” he said “We need to grow this company as a single entity and, of course, be objective on potential acquisitions, whether it is acquiring others or being acquired.”