Charles:
...You weren't impressed that he cried in church?
I'd say I wasn't impressed, though I will have to acknowledge that if I was in the bind he's in I'd be crying in church, too! ;-)
So as to what he did, or did not, know. Well....his office was connected with Sullivans, and they did go back far enough that he felt comfortable enough in saying to a CNBC talking head (this during the glory period) that Sullivan is the man who can "make those numbers dance."
A rather interesting turn of a phrase, eh? Ebbers must have known.
Be that as it may, given Ebbers background I seriously doubt he could have followed the particulars of the sometimes twisted and arcane nature of modern accounting principles (I point to his belated attempt at eliminating free coffee as an example - the Titanic equivalent of rearranging those chairs). But he was a guy who understood the need to maintain stock prices. He has publicly stated as much many times. It's here where I hold him accountable. It's logical to presume this obsessive focus strictly on stock valuation as a prime determinate of company (and personal) success, and not on the successful melding and cost smoothing of all those disparate systems from acquired entities - a smoothing that would have gone far to eliminate billing, customer service, etc., problems, trickled down and permeated throughout management structure. Consequently good people went down in flames chasing this upper echelon mandate. Ebbers didn't have the good sense to understand what it takes to run a successful local and long distance telecom entity, and by that sense adjust his mandate throughout the organization. Or maybe he did but he was caught on the hamsters wheel by that point?
This inability to change, in turn, contributed largely to WCOM's disaster. A disaster that seems common right now when you look across the landscape of Corporate America. The Law of Unintended Consequences, this time initiated by over-reliance on stock options as a form of compensation, appears to have struck again. So it goes.
Oh...and all of the above is IMHO, of course.
Now....anyone want to bet we have another week, from a general market perspective, like the last one? Yeeesh!
John~ |
