Today’s news headlines (yes, I still read the morning papers) collided and required I hold two differing facts simultaneously. One headline, California unemployment will top 13% and Adobe plans to lay off 680. Both were next to Walmart’s announcement they expect much higher sales. Am I missing something here? Another…several articles proclaim the recession is over. For whom? (See abovementioned layoff and unemployment comments. )
Some time ago, I did a presentation to a group of executives titled “Will this Marriage Work?” I took the position that very, very few mergers or acquisitons are ever successful, regardless of the measure used. At that time, Hewlett Packard was courting Compaq and I predicted it would not work. What a disatrous several years HP had after that! They are at it again, about to acquire 3Com. This article sat next to a distillation of several failed mergers–AOL-Time Warner; Ebay and Skype; Verisign and their 20 failed purchases to name just a few.
The SJ Mercury columnist Chris O’Brien observed that executives seem to have 3 strategic business choices—A. Fire; B. Acquire; C. Do both. So true. And the strangest part of this is when these merge and purge events occur, more American workers are out of a job, not buying goods and services (well, except at Walmart it seems); and we wonder why we are declining on the world economic stage. Oh, one other small headline, innovation and good ideas remain a vital force in the U.S. and Silicon Valley. Obviously not in many Executive suites.
Just my observation.
