Word: opel
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...perhaps the most fiercely protective company in the U.S. In a booklet distributed to employees, Chairman John Opel warns, "IBM increasingly is a target for people interested in illicitly acquiring significant business secrets. Over the years, there have been a number of actual thefts." The booklet describes an elaborate method of protecting company as sets, including a four-level system for classifying documents and computer data from "IBM Internal Use Only" to "Registered IBM Confidential." This spring IBM took three senior executives to court for revealing privileged information...
...John Opel is a lot more than just a corporate man, but he guards his privacy as closely as his company protects its secrets. He bridles at revealing much about his background or family, plainly believing that such matters are his own business. He fought with the U.S. Army on Okinawa in World War II and was wounded in the foot by a piece of shrapnel. He and his wife Carole have three daughters and two sons. He drives himself to work in a six-year-old car whose make he will not divulge and lives in a house...
...Opel spends much of his non-IBM time with his wife. Three mornings a week they are up at 5:30 and drive 20 miles to do aerobic and exercise-machine workouts "at a place where they don't know me." The Opels fish together, go to the opera together and watch birds together. They also work together to protect their privacy. On the rare occasion when a reporter calls him at home, Carole Opel answers politely and promises to bring her husband to the phone. But then she sets down the receiver without ever telling him. Callers...
Some IBM board members were worried about this almost obsessive penchant for privacy when Opel was being considered for chief executive. They were concerned that he would have trouble handling relations with the board and the public and within the company. Says one board member, former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton: "He is very possibly the brightest chief executive I've ever dealt with. But he did have some difficulty expressing himself." Yet former Du Pont Chairman Irving Shapiro, another board member, says that this has not turned out to be a problem. Says he: "The beautiful thing is that...
During his years of rising through the corporate ranks, Opel was often frustrated by IBM's centralized management. "No matter what I had in my jurisdiction, I typically felt I was more competent to deal with it than anyone else. And that wasn't conceit, it was just simple laws of nature," says Opel. That experience left him with a desire for decentralized decision making. He now tries to force corporate policymaking down and out, retaining at headquarters only what is necessary for overall planning and control. "You have to have people free to act, or they become...