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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy?
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To: Frederick Smart who wrote (30691)3/11/2000 7:55:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella  Read Replies (1) of 42771
 
"Senior" Management......

Fred said:

<For the past year, a select group inside Novell's senior management have burrowed into a hunker down, defensive, myopic, kill or be killed mode.
They don't get it.
I'm not saying this to offend Eric Schmidt, Bill Joy, Drew Major or all the other bright lights who dwell inside this tightfisted pyramid. But the dysfunction has to be rooted out.>

Paul's reply:

First of all Fred we had the rooting out of Marengi, which I believe you were after Joe Antol's throat for doing way back when, but perhaps you could clarify what you were doing back then because it wasn't rooting out. Thanks to the fact that the shareholders got fed up with Marengi et alia we got Eric Schmidt. That was good for the company. For awhile you guys were ready to bless everything Eric did.

More recently we convinced the senior management that Slitz was a disaster and while that was canning him was good for the company and opened up the possibility of restructuring their marketing efforts, it came very late and after digitalme was basically dead. What did that do for NOVL? As I recall Schmidt had to spend time reassuring Wall Street that Novell wasn't in some kind of managerial crisis and still had competent people to do the job. The stock went in the toilet.

Now with Slitz gone that did open up some senior positions for younger people whom Schmidt will expect to produce results. Schmidt obviously thinks he has picked the right people. Time will tell.

Schmidt also had to fire the marketing department more or less and we are sitting here waiting for a new one to be built up to speed.

Now what do you want to do, fire all the new marketing heads, new COO etc. etc.? Where does this stop? Remember Robiespiere? He was doing it all for the great principles of freedom, equality and liberty.

Obviously if Schmidt understood what to do to make things better he would do them.

But if Wall Street were to be as convinced as you are that the answer is some kind of massive purge and managerial bloodletting then don't you think they would panic and dump Novell down the drain? I do.

============

Then there is the question of Trust. You want management to open up but then you also want to punish them if they don't open up. Isn't this self-defeating as a strategy?
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