For Sprint, life with Gary might be bad, but who knows how much worse it could be without him? That’s the rationale keeping the shareholders from replacing the CEO, asserts an internal Sprint source.

Really? Is this the same man whom one year ago Business Week magazine hailed as one of the “Best Managers of 2004“? Says our tipster, name withheld to protect his job security,

Everyone who was in a position to get him removed has retired, resigned, or been terminated… There is no one in the company shareholders would trust to replace him.

Read the final installment of our interview with a Sprint mole, inside…

philip: The last couple of months our COO was fired, our Vice President of Customer Service resigned on two days notice, and our Chariman stepped down. Gary Forsee, our CEO, temporarily ran all of these positions at once.
benpopken: eeks
philip: Yeah VP Customer Service was the first to accept a Severance Package (a golden parachute I’m sure) when Gary Forsee announced 5,000 layoffs on January 7th. It was a bad, bad day.
philip: Everyone who was in a position to get him removed has retired, resigned, or been terminated.
philip: There is no one in the company shareholders would trust to replace him. He has ensured himself [a bulletproof] position. He is Chariman, CEO, and President.
philip: We just got a COO last week after almost three months without one… And nobody in executive leadership is experienced enough to lead a $40B corporation with 52 million subscribers. So even though company performance is outrageously disappointing, shareholders are fearful of how much worse it could be.
philip: Objectives for 2007 posted a couple of weeks ago and I have never seen metric demands that are so outrageous. A lot of good people will lose their job and I imagine a lot of good customers will string together tin cans and string. I’m not sure that Sprint is the worst because all things considered I have mixed feelings on if, as a consumer, I hate Sprint or Cingular more… But we are certainly not headed in the right direction and we show no hope of improving in the near future.
benpopken: sounds like you need a new leader
benpopken: but the shareholders are too pussy
philip: Exactly
philip: And the truly worthy talent within our corporation are all being walked out the door for not meeting goals. Or they’re opening company policy up for cute 20s-something pro-consumerists bloggers to tear apart for everyone to read.
benpopken: ha!

— BEN POPKEN

Previous leaks from our Sprint moles.

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