kemble -
re: Don't forget about the other glasses that are full that you haven't discovered yet...
I think that's a big part of the problem - a year ago, when DELL was at its all-time high, people just assumed that there were a bunch of nearly-full glasses waiting to be shoved out onto the bar - but after a year of mis-steps, collapse of the enterprise storage initiative, abandonment of the initiative to build an in-house services business, followed by a series of management FUBARS - strong pronouncements followed a week later by complete reversals, a consumer strategy that misfired, reduced growth and ASAP expectations - the perception is that if there are any glasses that haven't been discovered, they are shot glasses full of moonshine...
I agree with Jim Kelley on this - what DELL needs to do is deliver, not hint and promise, and they need to do that in their core business as well as in the speculative new stuff. They need to show that they are on top of what they are doing and have the management bandwidth to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. There is a growing perception, true or not, that DELL management did fine when everything was going their way but does not have the depth to deal with adversity, and they need to counter that perception with a couple of quarters of straight-ahead great execution. |
