Posted on 10/09/2006 9:14:11 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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Carly Fiorina wins praise for defining a new vision for a slow-moving bureaucracy that had essentially missed the Internet revolution. Before Fiorina, HP had a murky strategy for linking its computer, server and printer businesses. She recast HP as an IBM-like strategic partner for customers trying to take advantage of the always-on aspects of the Web era.
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| Carly Fiorina's career has followed an uncannily cinematic arc. A restless law school dropout becomes a master sales rep for Ma Bell, then rises higher in business than any other woman, running Hewlett-Packard Co. for six years. She wrestles that stodgy Silicon Valley institution into the Internet age, needing every ounce of her charm to win a huge merger contest. But her style inflames critics. After her financial results fall short, she is unceremoniously canned. So if this were a movie, what would happen next? That's right: Get ready for Fiorina's comeback. In her memoir emerging this week, "Tough Choices," Fiorina will contend that she was unfairly scrutinized as a woman in business and unproductively opposed by people who feared the big changes she had to make at HP. "It's a book about what's required of change agents," she told a women-in-business conference recently at Babson College outside Boston. "The agents of change are always resisted. ... Some people fear the unknown, whatever it may be, even more than they fear the troublesome but known present." On one level, the memoir seems perfectly timed as HP twists amid its current corporate spying scandal, confirming the dysfunctional insecurity of the board that fired Fiorina. But her opinion is not exactly objective. The board's extensive efforts to uncloak the source of media leaks began when she was chairwoman and CEO, though investigators eventually mined her phone records as well. The real reason the timing is fortuitous is that the book provides Fiorina a platform to reinvent herself for whatever comes next. She has the freedom of choice that comes from being extremely wealthy. Besides her $21 million severance pay, she began 2006 with 850,000 HP shares -- a stake that size is worth $31 million now. Fiorina, 52, told the Babson audience she has maintained her interest in global development issues. Her name emerged last year as a candidate for World Bank president. She has joined the boards of Cybertrust Inc., a computer-security company, and Revolution Health Group, a health-care venture launched by America Online founder Steve Case. Fiorina has advised President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on tech policy, but she traditionally dismissed questions of her own interest in politics by saying she was focused on running HP. Should she explore that route now, she might find she still has celebrity cachet. At a reception for presenters at the Babson conference, people waited 15 minutes or more to meet Fiorina, get her autograph or take a picture with her. Other accomplished businesswomen at the same long table were mainly left to fidget with their name placards as they awaited an occasional visitor. Stephen Mader, vice chairman of Christian & Timbers, the headhunting firm that brought Fiorina from AT&T Corp. spinoff Lucent Technologies Inc. to HP in 1999, says the ignominious end to her HP stint will not necessarily keep her from becoming a CEO again. However, Fiorina's next employer would be wise to study the strengths and weaknesses she showed at HP. Fiorina wins praise for defining a new vision for a slow-moving bureaucracy that had essentially missed the Internet revolution. Before Fiorina, HP had a murky strategy for linking its computer, server and printer businesses. She recast HP as an IBM-like strategic partner for customers trying to take advantage of the always-on aspects of the Web era. But generally she is considered to have fallen short on day-to- day operational matters -- the things that prompt raves for her successor, Mark Hurd. When Fiorina was fired in February 2005, HP's board had repeatedly backed her strategy -- including her hard-fought, $19 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. in 2002 -- but had grown tired of uneven earnings results. HP's stock sank 56 percent on her watch. Among the most famous letdowns: Fiorina told Wall Street HP could produce 15 percent revenue growth in 2001. It fell 7 percent. In August 2004, when sales fell way short of forecasts, Fiorina blamed embarrassing problems with an internal computer system and surprisingly weak customer demand, then fired three top executives. "When she got past the first three years of work, her lack of Hurd-type skills -- and her perhaps lack of self-awareness about having to inject those skills around her -- I think is what started to show the wear and tear. That's where it started to come apart," Mader said. As Fiorina tells it now, she was hampered by perceptions she struggled to change. "It is still true that women are caricatured and characterized differently from men," she said. She cites inaccurate rumors that she had a pink marble bathroom in her HP office and constantly traveled with a hairdresser and a makeup artist. She laments how people complained of her use of a private jet, even though that is standard for men in the business world. (It had been at HP as well, though her predecessor, Lew Platt, had reduced corporate flying to trim costs.) "Somehow there was no comment about it for them," Fiorina said. "For me it was used as an example that I was regal, which is code for 'bitch."' One of her other favorite double-standards involves layoffs. She cut at least 15,000 jobs after the Compaq deal; Hurd has whacked a similar amount. "A woman lays people off, she's heartless," Fiorina said. "A man lays people off, he's decisive." Fiorina has long said she disliked tallies of the "most powerful women in business" because there are more important things about leadership to discuss than gender. "Whoever heard of a list of men CEOs ranked against each other?" she said. But the truth is more complex. She never seemed eager to reject the limelight. After all, it was her emergence atop Fortune magazine's "most powerful" list in 1998 that put Fiorina on HP's CEO radar screen. Later, she deftly used attention on her as a way of rebranding HP as a hip player. And she posed with Condoleezza Rice for the cover shot of Fortune's 2003 dissection of female power. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at Yale's School of Management, saw Fiorina's globe-trotting in the spotlight as a reflection of the fact that she had "never been outside of backslapping in industrial sales" and was "thrown in over her head" as CEO of a sprawling organization. His verdict on her tenure: "A reign of terror and poor performance." "You've got to lay at the feet of the board the fault for picking her," said Sonnenfeld, who has recently advised some of those same directors on how to handle HP's spying scandal. Such negative assessments don't faze Fiorina. For one thing, she revels in recent observations that she might deserve some credit for HP's performance since her departure. The stock is up 86 percent in that time. Vyomesh Joshi, a 26-year HP veteran who heads its printing division, said Hurd is "doing a great job focusing on the execution" of the long-term strategy Fiorina implemented. "I think Carly is a great leader," Joshi said. "She brought along a lot of good changes and she had a powerful vision. I learned a lot from Carly." Fiorina also shrugs off the negatives from her HP past by remaining defiantly optimistic, careful to temper bitter notes. For example, she observes that while she endured plenty of hazing from men in her career -- such as an early AT&T colleague who insisted on meeting with a customer at a strip club -- some of those same guys eventually became her biggest supporters. "I feel incredibly blessed," she said. "I am an unexpected success story to myself." |
Carley succeeded at Bell because: 1)she was put in charge of departments which were cost not profit centers and she proved they weren't contributing to the business, so - 2) she made the case to dismantle the departments. Ergo, she was a 'hero' and rising star especially as a female. She was a specialist in eliminating organizations not building the. At HP, she fired indiscriminately, and 'outsourced' and 'feminized' the executive suite (with international hires and mediocre females who lacked experience and ability.)
She was disgrace and embarrassmentto all the very competent females who successfully work and contribute to the high tech market.
Which company is she out to destroy this time?
It is worth that much no thanks to her. This is how HPQ has performed since her firing. Up more than 100%..
Carly Fiorina was one of the most inept, overrated, incompetant CEO's in American corporate history. Anyone who gives her a similar job deserves the stock-shredding mayhem she will no doubt bring to their company.
As a formeer HP employee, may I say that if Carly Fiorina ever decides to run for public office, that I will be most happy to vote against her.
I've seen longer lines to meet Ann Coulter, a true self-made woman.
Always sell stock that has a CEO that is either (a) an affirmative-action hire like Carly; or (b) a 3rd-4th generation scion like Ford; or (c) the replacement for the brilliant maniac who built the company after he's bailed eg Microsoft.
"At a reception for presenters at the Babson conference, people waited 15 minutes or more to meet Fiorina"
What do you want to bet that they all had to go through a metal detector first...
While at HP, at least when she visited Boise, she brought her numerous personal body guards with her.
She was rightfully afraid for her life among HP employees.
"Anyone who gives her a similar job deserves the stock-shredding mayhem she will no doubt bring to their company."
I nominate Airbus.
Complete destruction of Lucent and sever damage to HP.
"women in business conference"
Translation, a bunch of feminists who hate men and want special treatment so they can then blame failure on something other than their own incompetence.
Did she really succeed or did she just have good microphones?
Didn't she almost destroy Lucent also. Her only reason for promotion seem to be she is a female.
Meanwhile, her minions are all facing prison in California for their wiretapping adventure, "to get those people" who got Carly fired.
Give me a break.
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