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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ToySoldier who wrote (34767)	11/10/2000 12:33:27 AM
From: Frederick Smart	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Morale Problems Are An Illusion..... >>I am glad to see Kilo that I am not the only one that seems to have witnessed Novell's sales and marketing staff all but shutting down opportunities. I dont know what size or type of company you belong to but I would guess its either very young and/or relatively small. MY theory is that Novell staff have lost their hunger for the business and are simply milking the older established Novell accounts, or the larger accounts with potentially big wins. They dont seem to want to deal with smaller younger "high risk / high reward" customers - even if they really want to use Novell's technology. And I can tell you that this lack of interest goes quite high from my experience with them. Its sad to see how they have shut down. I truly don't blame them though. I would think when Novell's stock collapsed and the obvious following on-slaught of industry analysts/media slamming every aspect of them and saying "I knew it was too good to be true about Novell's success", the moral and desire of Novell staff has taken any desire out of their drive. I can honestly say that I completely understand how they feel now as I just left my company (you all know who that is) up here in Canada a couple months ago as the division/region I left had also hit rock bottom on moral. Valued staff leaving in droves, others being "encouraged" to leave with severance packages, customers leaving them, smaller vendors eating their lunch, etc. The local industry has quickly noticed their pain as news travels fast in smaller communities (its like pirahna tasting blood). While I was there, I had lost all my enthusiasm just to carry on, much less promote the company. I think Novell staff are in the same situation I was in prior to leaving. If so, I feel sorry for them.>> The ONE thing that is knifing Novell's morale deep in the back more than anything else is it's deplorable leadership. Again, this is just my opinion. This is a leadership that seems to care less about the selfish example it sets for others. This is the same leadership that's been locking out and shutting down for political control purposes all the potential positive energy, drive and vision that was bursting and busting at the seams right up until March of 1999. Leadership is everything. For reasons we will perhaps never understand, Eric Schmidt was bamboozled by Nelson et. al. back in early '99. We have a negative inversion of operational & marketing leadership which has been characterized by individuals looking out for themselves first and the greater Novell community a distant second. We have an extremely talented/visionary Chairman/CEO who lost many of the primary outside executives he brought in and who's seince been too busy working on getting Gore re-elected. We have a massively "missing in action" board of directors who seem to have abdicated their fiduciary role to see to it that guidelines and goals are being set which work to hole Novell's management accountable. We have a pulling back. We have a drawing in. We have defensiveness. We have layers and layers of agendas that seem to be protecting those who don't want to open up Novell's culture to more risk, energy and creativity. The main point I'd like to stress is that I believe all this is ONE massive illusion. It's real all right, but this reality is illusory. It's shallow. It's weak. It lacks guts. It lacks energy. It lacks vision. All it would take to turn this thing around is a spark of creative indignation which also "let's go" and decisively forgives the power of illusion which has been separating the energy of individuals inside and outside this community with the massive potential that still is out there to be achieved. Every single individual inside and outside Novell can effectively create massive, massive positive change for this community, this company. I say it's time someone, somewhere, sometime stood up and took some great risk to fold and invert this negative energy back on itself into positive energy. The way this ICS spin-off is being handled will only accelerate the dismantling of Novell in the current defensive paradigm which I believe is all a hogwash illusion. A Novell spin-off should be accompanied with massive, massive positive press, potential, tie-ins, etc. Get cracking Paul. Stop playing into this defensive game. Thanks for the feedback Toy. Peace. GO!!