Two of the top executives brought in last year by Michael Dell to try to turn around Dell, the PC maker he founded, are to leave as part of a broader global reorganization. Note that Dell does not use the word fired.

The two unfortunates who were very senior people indeed were Mike Cannon, president of global operations and a former chief executive of Solectron, and Mark Jarvis, chief marketing officer and a former head of marketing at Oracle. They were key members of the new management group that Michael Dell put in place after he returned as chief executive early last year.

According to industry analysts they are a sign that Michael Dell’s initial efforts to reverse his company’s slide have not worked.

Michael Dell is a very pleasant guy. He built up the company from a part-time hobby building computers for his friends at university.

He built the company up through direct selling of good computers at fair, but not astoundingly low, prices. But it takes time to get the computer precisely the way you want it and customers want instant gratification.

And, possibly, the marketing methods left something to be desired. If you bought a desktop from Dell — I did — and you did not want it to run Vista which came supplied as a non-optional extra — me again — then it was $45 to remove Windows Vista and substitute Windows XP Pro. Which is how Dell lost another customer.

Dell itself characterized the departures as amicable, and said they were tied to a broader reorganization which was designed to bring a stronger global focus to its business.

That is PR bull.

The fact is Michael Dell has had a year’s honeymoon to turn Dell around and get it back on the right track — and failed. The old Dell model of bespoke building and direct selling was at it use by date.

So Michael Dell’s first push to revive the company involved an attempt to broaden its reach with new products aimed at consumers and wider distribution through retailers, diluting its traditional focus on selling direct to corporate customers. He also tried to put a new emphasis on operational efficiency and productivity, areas in which Dell had traditionally led the industry but where it had lost its edge.

It did not work and heads are starting to roll.

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Entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 1:31 am under Retail.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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