In 1999, a dysfunctional HP board committee, filled with its own poisoned politics, hired her with no CEO experience, nor interviews with the full board. Fired in 2005, after six years in office, several leading publications titled her one of the worst technology CEOs of all time. In fact, the stock popped 10% on the news of her firing and closed the day up 7%.
Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP’s founder, commented when discouraging voters from supporting Fiorina in her 2010 senatorial run, “I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded.”
and last I heard, Hewlett-Packard is still doing just fine as a corporation.
Under Meg Whitman’s brilliant leadership, HP’s character and performance have recovered, but we have not seen Fiorina’s parallel resilience just yet.
Yes, I followed HP pretty closely when she was CEO, and her record was pretty dismal. It’s not Monday-morning quarterbacking; just a statement of what happened.
As I’ve said on other threads, we need to vet our candidates very carefully. If they can’t stand up to our questioning, they sure as heck won’t stand up to the dims or the dinosaur media.