Ben (and Rich):
At 05:58 PM 6/28/96 -0600, Ben wrote:
>Gordon responded to LO8125 (a post I made about merging two companies
>together, in which I related some of our experiences as Novell and
>WordPerfect)--
And Rich added:
>I look for msgs that
>go deeper than "XYZ co. is doing a great job" or "...not." If I had been
>paying more attention, I would have gone back to Gordon to say, "OK,
>you have these impressions of Novell... What do you think is going on
>here? Why and how is this happening? And, what data has led you to these
>conclusions?"
I shall attempt to answer the pair at a stroke, although it will be
difficult not to seen a cad given the obvious emotion and enthusiasm that
Ben exudes for his firm. Readers, especially Europeans, familiar with the
impassioned defense that the medieval historian Paul Mantou (spelling is
off) made in the forward of later editions of his son's, Etienne,
impassioned assault on J.M. Keynes (for his permitting Germany's economic
resurgence after Versailles rather than dismembering its economy) after
the son had fallen in battle against the Germans in World War II will know
what I'm up against.
Ben described my comments as <<very biased>> whereas they are common
currency in the venture capital community and the technology banking
markets -- and Frankenberg (the succeeding CEO to Ray Noorda) has been not
been able to improve the internal cooperation and reduce operational
angst. The comment that the "strategic plan was the 90 day forecast" is
not mine but merely a comment passed around in describing Novell. The
Novell-WordPerfect merger is now being used as a B-school case study in
error. Such comments must be painful indeed for a stakeholder so
committed as Ben but better that he hear the "message from outside the
walls" rather than rest unsuspecting. Based upon all that I know, I cannot
revise a single word in my comments, although I wish that I could.
>Let me just say that whatever Novell's weaknesses have been (or continue
>to be), there is a tremendous amount of commitment to the company and its
>success from the employees. Personally, I'd bleed out of the eyes to help
>Novell dominate every market it chooses to compete in.
I do not doubt that for a second. From my vantage point, it makes the
situation all the more sad when great effort such as yours are undermined
elsewhere.
I added the specifics regarding this particular merger because it was a
textbook case of a clash of cultures and a (mutually) mishandled
acquisition.
Best regards, Gordon Housworth
Intellectual Capital Group
ghidra@modulor.com
Tel: 810-626-1310
--Gordon Housworth <ghidra@modulor.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>