Don’t Listen To Trump: Here’s the Truth About Carly Fiorina’s Business Record

Earlier this week, someone who had read my piece about Donald Trump’s less-than-A+ record in business asked me if I’d write something about Carly Fiorina’s business record and why I think despite Democratic and Trumpette knocks on it, it actually indicates that she would do a good job as President (full disclosure: I have worked with and consulted for Carly Fiorina in the past). With that in mind, here goes nothing.

First, let’s start broad brush, with the basic recognition that Carly Fiorina is a self-made woman. Unlike Trump, she comes from a family of academic types, not business people—let alone already wealthy business people, as Trump did. She has not had the privilege of inheriting an existing business to run and expand. In fact, she has worked her way up from secretary to CEO, giving her reams of business and human experience that both many business leaders and many professional politicians do not have.

Yes, Carly knows what it’s like to be a bigshot in the board room, desperately sought after as a guest by cable business news channels and a featured speaker by big name business leadership conferences. She also knows what it’s like to be the receptionist who takes crap on her boss’ behalf from angry people all day long, who pulls down a meager paycheck, probably is subjected to rudeness if not harassment routinely, and who has had to use every tool in her arsenal to get ahead.

First, Carly is more likely to have empathy for those working at the bottom of the totem pole than do those whose personal, familial circumstances have made and kept them remote from average workers and their concerns. She is more likely to understand the challenges facing them and how government can act—or get out of the way—and make their lives better.

Second, she is capable of taking on big challenges and rising to meet them—with zero safety net underneath her.

Third, she has ideas as to how American workers can get ahead that are cultural and practical, not merely policy-based. This matters, since a significant amount of the President’s power is exerted through use of the bully pulpit on issues that may never be legislated or regulated, and since it’s been demonstrated that when it comes to addressing, say, compensation increase issues in the workplace, discrimination, flex-time opportunities or lack thereof, and other challenges that too many Americans face, legislation and litigation may help less than certain direct actions that employees can take themselves. Wouldn’t it be great to have a president who understands this, from personal experience, and can help people deal with very real challenges without seeing an executive order as a panacea?

Fourth, Carly knows how to turn nothing, or nothing much, into something—a trait America could use in a leader right now as various indicators ranging from the pure economic to reputational as concerns the international stage suggest we’re backsliding, and becoming a shadow of the amazing, powerhouse nation, the best in the world, that we have previously been and desperately want to be again. Unlike a lot of leaders—in politics, or elsewhere—when Carly sees a challenge, she runs directly at it. That may be risky and disadvantageous from a self-preservation perspective; it also means she may stand a better chance of fixing really major problems, such as those plaguing the Veterans Administration, simply by having a different approach to problem-solving and being more of a risk-taker.

Next, let’s look at some of the specific challenges Carly has dealt with, bearing in mind the current trajectory of the U.S. which for too many Americans is one that seems inevitably to involve backslide. Remember, according to data released last month by Haven Life/YouGov, “barely more than one in 10 (13%) American adults believe their children will be better off financially than they were when their career reached its peak” and “just 20% of Americans believe their children will have a better quality of life when they reach their age.”

As CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly inherited a company that was deeply troubled and whose trajectory looked very bleak to many analysts (I can recall negative outlooks conveyed in business reporting I read back in those days). The tech sector was a tough environment (much as it is today); it got tougher while Carly was CEO, thanks to the bursting of the tech bubble and 9/11; and let’s remember, for as well-known a brand as HP is, she was not running Apple.

In many quarters, corporate thinking at the time was that HP was destined for the trash heap of history, if not quite at the point of hovering by a thread over the dumpster quite yet. As Bill Mutell, Former Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing and Global Lead for Government, Health and Education at HP, has put it, “When Carly took the helm at HP, it was well known in the technology industry that, without new leadership that shook up its stagnating culture, the company would have lost its competitive edge and might even have become obsolete.”

Yet HP exists today, and very arguably one of the reasons that it does—though it continues to face challenges being addressed by current CEO Meg Whitman, who incidentally has defended Carly’s tenure—is because Carly was willing to undertake controversial moves and ruffle feathers, including of HP people stuck in the past, and board members whose leadership instincts were so off-base and corrupted that they literally thought that spying on fellow HP personnel’s email and phone records (including Carly’s) was kosher. (By the way, being fired by such people may read as a compliment in some quarters).

HP’s acquisition of Compaq is the most frequently cited controversial thing that Carly did. Some Compaq loyalists bereave the loss of the Compaq brand. The fact is, however, that under Carly, HP did better in terms of its marketing to consumers and positioning in key areas. The company jumped from third to first, nationally, in the server market and from fourth to first, nationally, in the PC market. It maintained its dominance of the printer market, at #1. What does this tell us? Under a President Carly, America might just stop having our proverbial lunch eaten by the Chinese, the Indians, or any other nationality presenting us with stiff competition just now.

Under Carly, HP’s cash flow also quadrupled. Current assets increased by 60 percent. HP’s growth rate went up. That suggests Carly might have some inkling as to how to close the deficit and bring down the national debt, whereas most professional politicians struggle with this in practice.

Democrats and Trump have attacked Carly for having laid off workers post-acquisition, apparently in the mistaken belief that a company can function well, avoid infighting that brings the business to a standstill, and deliver on its duties to shareholders and entire employee pool by keeping two Chief Financial Officers, with equal responsibility, stature and pay; two Directors of Human Resources, again, with equal responsibility, stature and pay; two lawyers for every needed legal position, again, with equal responsibility, stature and pay; two project managers managing every job, with every underling unclear on which of the two to report to, and who gets final sign off if there’s a disagreement.

But the reality is that had Carly not dealt with duplication issues presented after Compaq, the business would have cratered dealing with basic organizational constraints, turf warfare, too little work for too many people, higher-than-needed costs, and minimized opportunities for promotion and pay rises for deserving employees. That would have been disastrous both for shareholders and for workers. Then, just like if Carly had not taken the decisions she did, including the Compaq acquisition, to push HP forward even if it meant trying something totally outside the box, something risky, and—yes—something since copycatted in the tech industry, you can bet 100,000 to 150,000 HP jobs would have been on the line, as opposed to the 30,000 that ultimately proved to be, and that the entire company would have been in jeopardy as opposed to, say, merely just continuing forward, still carrying some big challenges.

The truth is that Carly laid people off. The truth is also that she had no choice (and in fact, there’s an argument she should have laid off more—her successor, Mark Hurd, laid off a further 15,000 early in his tenure, and Meg Whitman has laid off 55,000), and that despite the layoffs, overall employee numbers still stayed the same or rose, throughout her tenure.

Ben Rosen, a former non-executive director of Compaq, writes of HP, post-Compaq, “[Hurd] took the pieces assembled by Fiorina, applied his management skills to them, and created a growing, profitable and increasingly valuable company.”

Bob Wayman, Former HP Board Member, CFO, and interim CEO after Carly’s departure said of Carly and HP, “I believe HP is better off today as a result of the Board’s decision to hire Carly Fiorina…she is very smart, a very quick study, an incredible communicator…she’s a leader. She focuses on what needs to be done and drives it.”

Deborah Dower, Former HP VP of U.S. Sales, Government, Education, and Medical, says the Compaq acquisition was, “The absolute best thing that could have ever happened to HP.”

Craig Barrett, Former CEO and Chairman of the Board at Intel has also attributed HP’s transformation into the largest computer manufacturer in the world to Carly’s leadership, and says she made the “right decisions.” Under Carly, he says, “What did change was a dramatic move to ensure HP’s future in a world where living in the past and refusing to move forward was a recipe for mediocrity or worse.”

What does this tell us about Carly? First off, that her priority is not going to be to take the “safe” route that does little to fulfill her responsibilities, but which does much to protect her personal reputation and brand (the kind of thing Americans are sick and tired of seeing out of career politicians).

Perhaps it also shows that to protect the vast majority long-term, financially, Carly would take tough decisions that result in vicious personal criticism of her. That could be the shrinking of the federal government, something that could greatly benefit the private sector and the vast majority of employees and taxpayers nationwide. It could be her pushing America to get out of its comfort zone and do really outside the box and scary, but necessary things where a range of competitiveness issues are concerned, whether that’s education, regulatory policy, taxation policy or trade policy.

Moreover, it tells us she has the toughness to pursue what she believes is right and will be most beneficial whether or not it is popular, and whether or not Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or anyone else thinks it’s a good idea. Carly is well-positioned to stop the flow of jobs to other countries, who are currently better positioned than the U.S. in many respects to undertake particular types of work; as she said many times in her California Senate race, she knows why jobs come and go, and how government drives the process of their going in so many cases. In difficult industries, she will most likely save jobs.

While at HP, Carly kept the company’s debt below 50 percent of equity. Contrasted with, say, Donald Trump’s record which involves numerous bankruptcies and failures to make massive payments owed in respect of bonds, it seems likely that Carly would constrain the national debt whereas the other “business candidate” in the race has a record suggesting he’d vastly grow it.

Carly was also a driver of innovation at HP; patents tripled on her watch. This is a particularly important note: In order to dominate economically, the U.S. must continue to be a leader in innovation, and Carly knows how to do this, whether it is to do with the content of patent laws, education policy, or, again, using the bully pulpit and the most powerful position in the world to encourage young Americans to build, design, and create.

Finally, Carly’s experience as a business leader gives her qualifications relevant to the job of President in another way: Unlike any other candidate in the GOP field, she actually has personal relationships with a big chunk of major world leaders with whom the next president will need to interface. Whether it’s Bibi Netanyahu, King Abdullah of Jordan, or Vladimir Putin, she already knows these people (she had to, from her work as a CEO), knows how they work and think, and knows how to handle them. The same cannot be said of any other candidate in the Republican field. Carly also served on a key American intelligence board, giving her critical insight where the issue of our intelligence services and capabilities is concerned.

Like any person who has taken on big challenges and big fights in corporate America, Carly’s record isn’t perfect. But it contains many good aspects, including several that are highly germane to the job she is currently applying for, and many that are better indicators of her likely future success in the role than what we see with the man who has recently taken to attacking her appearance (presumably since he, too, knows that attacks on her business record—especially coming from him—have a good chance of falling flat).

The GOP is lucky that we have a tremendously good array of candidates from which to choose in 2016. But if voters are looking for a candidate who isn’t a politician, and who has business experience, Carly deserves attention.

UPDATE: Bloomberg reported yesterday that HP will be letting go a further 25,000-30,000 workers as part of a restructuring— which may serve to underline the point that HP has long faced tough challenges entailing job losses, and indeed continues to face them.

Via link:

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https://www.facebook.com/cultofcommoncore/posts/827608427358514:0

Stop the Cult of Common Core

September 15 at 12:43am · Edited ·

AZ’s chief Common Core pusher hosts exclusive private fundraiser for Carly Fiorina in Phoenix.

Craig Barrett, AZ’s chief Common Core pusher and Chairman of the Board at Achieve Inc. (architects of the Common Core standards), hosted a private fundraiser for Carly Fiorina in AZ on 9/10/15 according to the Maricopa County Republican Committee (MCRC) Briefs.

Craig Barrett, Arizona's poorer version of Bill Gates, routinely supports candidates for Governor and Superintendent of Education who then go on to advocate for his position of supporting Common Core learning standards and the suctioning of data to all of his buddies at the Chamber of Commerce.
Craig Barrett would NOT support anyone who is truly against Common Core in their actions.

During her run for US Senate in CA Carly Fiorina put out a position paper praising and supporting Obama’s Race To The Top (RTTT) program which tied federal funding to the adoption of what would later be called Common Core which includes federally driven learning standards, tests, teacher evaluations, and NSA-like data suctioning systems which are all in place now.

Many RINO candidates across the country wishing to gain the conservative vote profess to be against Common Core during their campaign only to do nothing of substance to rid our country of it once in office. Many use the tactic of saying that Common Core was a good idea but its implementation has been a disaster or that its original good intentions were “hijacked” by special interests.

Is Carly following this model?

The Fiorina “presidential” campaign is now saying that no one in the country, including her, knew what the Common Core had in mind when she supported it back in 2010.

In a major attempt at CYA her campaign now says,

“At the time that Race to the Top was proposed in 2009 and when Carly supported it in 2010, it was a funding program based on real performance metrics and opposed by the teachers’ unions. But like so many other government programs with worthy goals backed by flowery speeches, it hasn’t turned out to be what we were promised. Instead, Race to the Top is just the latest example of the federal bureaucracy caving to the powerful interests...”

I'm calling BS, Carly.

I'm posting a link to the original announcement in 2009 for your consideration in the comments section-it came out a year before Fiornina’s CA Senate campaign position paper on education.

Obama’s 2009 RTTT/Common Core program announcement clearly reads like a blueprint for the federal takeover of education away from the states while digitally tracking every kid in our country from kindergarten to college. It is very clear that the feds would be holding federal money hostage until states adopted Common Core's federally driven and created education reforms and “changed laws” to make its adoption possible. Read it and come to your own conclusions.

In fact Obama’s intentions were very clear to then Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, Governor Perry of Texas, as well as the conservative governors of Virginia and Nebraska who subsequently refused the federal dollars and the RTTT program because the agreement to adopt all the facets of Common Core took away state sovereignty over education.

I think many people would be sympathetic to a candidate who is evolving on Common Core as they understand it better. Bobby Jindal tried this. But let's not insult America's anti-Common Core warriors’ intelligence by pleading ignorance and rewriting Common Core's history. Fess up and move on.
According to Carly for America News, Fiorina also brought on former AZ gubernatorial candidate, and former Mayor of Mesa, Common Core loving Scott Smith to her campaign as our state's co-chair.

Scott Smith had the dubious distinction of being the only GOP candidate in the last election cycle to openly support Common Core. Even though he had the support of former Gov Jan Brewer who installed Common Core in AZ, Scott Smith's campaign crashed and burned.

When a donor makes a contribution to a campaign, much less holds a private fundraiser at their house, they own stock in their ‘”investment”.

Does Common Core own Carly?
-
- Brad McQueen

http://www.ccsso.org/News_and_Events/Press_Releases/NATIONAL_GOVERNORS_ASSOCIATION_AND_STATE_EDUCATION_CHIEFS_LAUNCH_COMMON_STATE_ACADEMIC_STANDARDS_.html

Quotes from Supporters

“Common education standards are essential for producing the educated work force America needs to remain globally competitive. This voluntary state-lead effort will help ensure that all students can receive the college- and career-ready, world-class education they deserve, no matter where they live. I applaud the states’ efforts that got us here today and the work of NGA, CCSSO and Achieve in supporting this important achievement.”

- Craig Barrett, Former CEO and Chairman of the Board, Intel Corporation

http://archives.mcrcbriefs.org/2015/09/9-9-15-briefs.html

Maricopa County Republican Committee Briefs

TBP to 2ndDivisionVet

Carly Fiorina was the winner on points. She’s the best speaker by a mile. She’s able to talk passionately to pro-lifers, be wry with Donald Trump, and speak fluently about the structure of the U.S. military.
From one of my friends on Facebook:

“Fiorina is feisty and smart. But there are serious red flags about her candidacy as a “conservative”. Here are ten of them: 1) her support for Cap and Trade, 2) her belief in man-made global warming, 3) her support of The Dream Act, 4) her support for Obama’s “Race for the Top” 5) her comments about Roe v Wade being “a settled issue”, 6) her support for homosexuals in the military, 7) her support for TARP (though she later recanted) and for the AIG bailout, 8) she has perpetuated the myth that women are paid less for same work, 9) she stated that women need to make up at least half of elected representatives in order for women to be represented 10) she opposes a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s invention of federal marriage rights for homosexuals, BONUS) she supported confirmation of Sotomayor to SCOTUS.”

Does any more need to be said?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3338183/posts

Imagine that! FNC has stacked the deck for iCarly on upcoming FOX NEWS SUNDAY.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv/tv-guy/os-carly-fiorina-john-kasich-rand-paul-20150918-post.html

Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina: Sunday guests

EXCERPT

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is a guest on “Fox News Sunday” at 10 a.m. on WOFL-Channel 35. Other guests are Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, and Father Thomas Rosica, CEO of Salt and Light Television Network. The program will salute Dr. Jewel Barlow, director of the Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel as a power player. The panel will be Brit Hume, Karl Rove, Kirsten Powers of USA Today and Charles Lane of The Washington Post.

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https://twitter.com/chucklane1

Charles Lane @ChuckLane1 Sep 16

So on my card I have
1. @CarlyFiorina 2. @marcorubio 3. @JebBush 4. @GovChristie
I don't rate @realDonaldTrump cuz I don't get him.

https://twitter.com/KirstenPowers?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Kirsten Powers @KirstenPowers Sep 17
Carly's Night | The Weekly Standard http://tws.io/1iyWeeV

Kirsten Powers @KirstenPowers Sep 16
My column this week: Fiorina’s ‘Faces’ flattened Trump http://usat.ly/1UTHiUv via @usatoday @usatopinion

“Fiorina is feisty and smart.

But there are serious red flags about her candidacy as a “conservative”.

Here are ten of them:

1) her support for Cap and Trade,

2) her belief in man-made global warming,

3) her support of The Dream Act,

4) her support for Obama’s “Race for the Top”

5) her comments about Roe v Wade being “a settled issue”,

6) her support for homosexuals in the military,

7) her support for TARP (though she later recanted) and for the AIG bailout,

8) she has perpetuated the myth that women are paid less for same work,

9) she stated that women need to make up at least half of elected representatives in order for women to be represented

10) she opposes a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s invention of federal marriage rights for homosexuals,

BONUS) she supported confirmation of Sotomayor to SCOTUS.”

Does any more need to be said?

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