Uccel

Strategic Concepts & Mechanics

Signature MoveThirty Percent Turnover as Pruning Not Failure

Signature MoveFormer Bosses Report to Former Subordinates, Same Pay

Capital StrategyConservative Treasury, Radical Operations

Identity & CultureImmigrant Hunger as Hiring Filter

Signature MoveMemos Replaced by Oral OK and a Sharp Pencil

Competitive AdvantagePay What You're Worth, No Salary Schedule

Cornerstone MoveProduct-Owner as Mini-CEO Guillotine

Risk DoctrineDay-One Honesty in Every Acquisition

Decision FrameworkStars to Priorities, Privates to Sergeant

Signature MoveUnmanaged Pigs as Growth Path for Non-Managers

Signature MoveRank Everyone Against Everyone, No Threes Allowed

Cornerstone MoveUndevelop the Product Until Someone Can Afford It

Strategic PatternAcquire the Product, Architect the Bridge

Cornerstone MoveAcquire Products Not Talent, Then Gut the Org Chart

Cornerstone MoveZero-Based Thinking: Restart the Company Every Year

Primary Evidence

"Because CA is in the main interested only in companies with legitimate products and strong sales, the ADR tale is hardly a novelty. The same story has been repeated dozens of times in large companies acquired for hundreds of millions each—like Uccel, Cullinet, On-Line, and Pansophic—and small ones with one product generated by technical sophistication, but without a clue as to what to do with it. Reviewing these acquisitions is like fast-forwarding through a collection of early television west- erns in which an outsider is called in to bring justice to a town under seige from its own corrupt leadership. After a while you wonder that no one ever complained that it is all the same plot, sometimes even the same lines."

Source:Twenty-First-Century Management _ the Revolutionary Strategies That Have Made Computer Associates a Multibillion-Dollar Software Giant

"hard choices. But every time we fire people, we are not firing people, we're replacing them with better people. Not neces- sarily more-talented people, but more-willing people, people who bring a good attitude. The people at Uccel were used to"

Source:Twenty-First-Century Management _ the Revolutionary Strategies That Have Made Computer Associates a Multibillion-Dollar Software Giant

Appears In Volumes

Twenty-First-Century Management _ the Revolutionary Strategies That Have Made Computer Associates a Multibillion-Dollar Software Giant