Plain Vanilla, but Very Good

By John F. Stacks

When he was growing up in the 1930s in Jefferson City, Mo., then home to 23,000 people, his schoolmates called him Johnny. Slightly large hands and feet gave him a strong backstroke on the high school swimming team, recalls Boeing Chairman T.A. Wilson, a freestyler on the same squad. Johnny's father "Gump" ran a local hardware store. Years later, when the boy began making it big in business, a reporter for the local newspaper went out to see Gump and asked whether he was surprised by his son's success.

"No," said Gump, "I always knew Johnny was a good boy." Good as gold, almost. As chief executive officer of IBM, John Opel earned a handsome $1.3 million last year. He also owns $4 million worth of his company's stock.

Compared with the Thomas Watsons, father and son, Opel appears almost bland. "Plain vanilla," says one member of the IBM board, "but good plain vanilla." Says a middle-level executive: "With Tom Watson, you knew stories about him. With Opel, there are no vibes. You just know, in a business sense, exactly what his goals and objectives are."

In his simple but elegant office at IBM's headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., the only mildly unusual feature is a stand-up desk that Opel uses in addition to a standard one. He receives visitors with a correctness that is so smooth it can be mistaken for real easiness. But Board Member William Coleman, a Secretary of Transportation in the Ford Administration and now a Washington lawyer, says Opel is noted more for his strength than for his charm. Says Coleman: "He's tough. You can tell instantly when you're rubbing him the wrong way or when you've stayed beyond your time."

While IBM's stern dress code has been eased, Opel still follows the old one. His shirts are white oxford cloth and as buttoned down as the man. His ties are impeccable and subdued, his shoes standard-issue corporate cordovans: no buckles, tassels or other frills.

John Opel achieved the top post by molding himself to be just what the company wanted, because that is exactly what he too wanted. Opel sees himself as something of an interchangeable part of the firm. "I'm a product of the culture of IBM, of the way we do things," he says.

Starting with the firm straight out of the University of Chicago School of Business in 1949 as a salesman in Jefferson City, Opel was soon being shifted around with dizzying frequency; he has held 19 different jobs. His career picked up fast in 1959, when he was chosen to be an administrative assistant to Thomas Watson Jr., then president, for one year. Following that, Opel began serving in a wide variety of posts, ranging from manufacturing to press relations.

Opel today gives visitors and colleagues a sense of self-containment, but he admits to having had a wicked temper. Once when he could not get a flat tire off his Chrysler because he was turning a lug the wrong way, he became so enraged that he bashed in the side of the car. "I don't get angry the way I used to," Opel says. But the old intensity, just barely noticeable beneath the perfect manners, can still be useful. "People know that I mean what I say and that I don't suffer fools," he says.

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 he will not describe beyond noting that it is "big enough to accommodate five children."

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 get the message.

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 Opel has come out of his shell."

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 dependent," he says. "They don't have to be told; they have to be allowed." In pursuit of that goal, Opel established seven Independent Business Units, which operate much like small companies within IBM. One of the first products created by Opel's brainchildren: that bountiful beauty, the IBM Personal Computer. --By John F. Stacks This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.