A View on View :: Daichendt's Bizarre Nortel Experience

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Daichendt's Bizarre Nortel Experience

by Mark Evans on Tue 05 Jul 2005 02:13 PM EDT | Permanent Link

The Ottawa Citizen's James Bagnell has a great story into why Nortel COO Garry Daichendt abruptly left last month after only three months at the helm. Apparently, Daichendt went into a board meeting with CTO Gary Kunis to discuss their strategic plan. Before he started, Daichendt said he and his wife had asked God for guidance. God's message, Daichendt disclosed, was he should replace Bill Owens as CEO, and CFO Peter Currie, who was seen as Owens' successor before Daichendt was hired, should leave. If this is an accurate depiction of what happened, it's an incredible, mystifying story. It also explains why Owens danced around the topic during last week's AGM when he emphasized on several occasions that Daichendt resigned because of different management styles rather than strategic differences. Still, the enduring question is why the board and Owens didn't realize something like this situation had the potential to happen when they were interviewing Daichendt and doing their due diligence. From all accounts, Daichendt is well-respected but he had been out of the telecom industry for five years so it wasn't like he wanted to come back to just be #2. Perhaps Nortel had good intentions and were so giddy about securing Daichendt's services, they overlooked any weaknesses. In any event, Bagnell's story is a must read for anyone interested in Nortel.

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Nortel Networks

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Re: Daichendt's Bizarre Nortel Experience

by Anonymous on Tue 05 Jul 2005 05:30 PM EDT | Permanent Link

In fairness (and I'm a Christian myself), I don't think "do you talk to God before big meetings?" is a very common question in job interviews...

Mind you had he answered "yes" and indicated that he gets a personal response I don't know if that makes him well connected or "connectionless" if you see what I mean...

Re: Daichendt's Bizarre Nortel Experience

by Anonymous on Fri 08 Jul 2005 01:14 AM EDT | Permanent Link

How does a company get that kind of information during the interview process without breaking discrimination laws?

Re: Daichendt's Bizarre Nortel Experience

by Blogger_Brent on Fri 08 Jul 2005 03:37 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Just talked to a CEO in Fremont that knows Daichendt very well from Cisco and socially. He had not seen the story and I sent him the link. He was flabbergasted at the fact that Gary wanted the CEO job, let alone how he alledgedly asked for it. He said Gary has incredible political astuteness and that to do something like this would be so out of character as to be unbelievable. His thoughts (and probably most folks in the Valley with him) when he (they) heard Daichendt left Nortel were that there was something horribly wroing at Nortel still, either financially or culturally such that any strategy would not work out. Interesting POV from the Valley. Also interesting that it did not make the news down there...

Re: Daichendt's Bizarre Nortel Experience

by Anonymous on Fri 08 Jul 2005 09:49 PM EDT | Permanent Link

James Bagnell is a terrific reporter, and I would never slag his work, but I find it curious that the only source of this story is "one account" -- which is only mentioned halfway through and doesn't give us an idea of how reliable this account is. Considering this is such a bizarre story, and a story that may be hugely embarrassing to Daichendt (or maybe not), you'd think he'd demonstrate that his version of events comes from a few sources, and credible ones at that, even if unnamed. That said, I have no reason to believe it's not true. What an incredible story.
Tyler

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