Taking chances

It took a long time to find a replacement for Bob Frankenberg [who left almost a year ago]. Are you taking a chance here?
Of course. Anytime you take a CEO job in a company whose revenues are not growing at some astronomical rate, you are taking a chance. For me personally, I looked at this as a perfect alignment of what I wanted to do, and to be quite honest, I'm quite happy here. I'm not trying to dismiss the serious competitive problems the company has, but from the standpoint of working in the domain I care about, this is a perfect alignment.

Are you prepared to run a company of this size?
Well, I don't think I have a choice. I appear to be running it. I think so. I had run a number of operating divisions at Sun, which is not at the same level. I had not been chairman of a board, I had not done a shareholders meeting, but now I've done those and they don't seem to be that out of line with what I've done in the past. The hardest thing so far has just been the size. We have lots of talented engineers who actually have opinions and they send them to you. You really want to be disciplined to think them through and listen to them. I've always been very collaborative both internally and externally.

From my perspective, more communication is good. I'm very nonhierarchical. I'm trying to get everybody to be very passionate. The Sun culture was very aggressive: lots of arguing, lots of strong positions, and I prefer that. It means to me that the company is alive. I was initially worried about that and then I found myself in a meeting where we were discussing a very important issue. Once everybody felt comfortable, it was just like Sun. I felt much better. Great cultures develop great products.

Wall Street seems to like the thought of you leading Novell. Why do you think that's so?
I suspect that Wall Street is reacting to the fact that the company appeared to be leaderless for sometime. I'm pretty well-known and the theory is that I can develop a winning strategy for the company and bring some revenue growth back. Wall Street doesn't like surprises and so here's a definitive answer. Someone they know and so forth. And I should say that Sun seems to be doing just fine without me. And I'm very loyal to Sun as well.

What about that loyalty? Does your arrival give Novell a shot at stronger Sun partnerships?
I hope so. I talk to the Sun people all the time. We're all friends. I have a commitment from them, and they have my commitment, to work together. We have a lot of joint customers.

What do you get if you haul Novell's stock out of the dumpster? What's in this for you?
For me it's the intellectual challenge. I do this because I love it. In my years at Sun I was always approached with: "Would you like to do this or that?" and I'd say: "No, because it doesn't look very interesting." This is actually very interesting, very challenging. I like the people, I enjoy the customer base, I enjoy the strategy area. As long as that continues, I'm going to be psyched as I can be.

But no move to Utah?
I spend a lot of time in Utah, and I'm looking for a house to buy there. The point is that I have to be both places and who wants to live in hotels? Trust me, if you're going to have a second home somewhere, Utah would not be a bad choice. I'm a skier.