A Bunch of Suits and a Guy In Jeans

I've always been impressed with Jeff Clarke of Dell for a variety of reasons.  He is an organically grown Dell executive.  He started out as an entry level guy and has worked his way up to reporting directly to Michael Dell.  He always seemed to give talks and presentations that were straightforward and easy to understand.  He also would answer questions directly.  He is one of the longest tenured Dell executives and understands the company and it's history very well.

So what's up with the jeans?

A distinguished panel of executives was presented before the press at the kick-off of DellWorld 2012 this afternoon in Austin.   Michael Dell was of course there as the CEO, Chairman of the Board, and former wunderkind who started a multi-billion dollar business from his dorm room.

Steve Felice was kind of the moderator of the panel and served to kick things off and introduce everyone.  Steve is a long time Dell executive that has essentially been successful at all of his posts at the company for the past decade.

The new guys in the form of Marius Haas and John Swainson were on stage as well as Suresh Vaswani who has been with Dell for about 5 years but was just last week moved to be the head of Dell Services in the wake of Steve Shuckenbrock's announced departure.

All of these guys are wearing sports coats, button down shirts, and slacks.  Jeff Clarke is also on stage, but he is wearing jeans and a casual button down blue checkered shirt.  Very relaxed.

What's the message with the jeans?

He definitely stood out from the panel on the stage.  Everybody will remember Jeff Clarke, Michael Dell, and some other guys in suits.  The reason for the jeans and relaxed shirt is probably at partly that he just like to wear that kind of stuff, but I think he also knows that he it puts him at an advantage.

The Q and A session goes by and nobody asks about the jeans. Too bad.