Posted on 04/21/2010 7:50:21 AM PDT by SmithL
WASHINGTON — After she was fired in 2005, Carly Fiorina's stormy tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard was widely labeled a failure — marked by a plummeting stock price, a bruising battle with the firm's founding families over her corporate strategy, and mass layoffs at a company revered for its benevolent treatment of employees.
Five years later, Fiorina is running for U.S. Senate, and her business record is back in the spotlight. But a review of her tenure, based on interviews with multiple sources who followed her time at HP closely, paints a more nuanced picture: that of an executive with keen strategic foresight who ultimately was unable to execute her vision.
Fiorina continues to draw negative reviews for her management skills and a leadership style that critics say focused excessively on marketing buzz and flash. Other critics say she destroyed the famous "HP Way," transforming a company built on innovation and valuing its employees into a bottom-line-obsessed behemoth that treats workers like commodities.
"HP just really isn't such a special place anymore," said David Woodley Packard, a former HP board member whose father cofounded the company. "She came in and turned it into something else, and I don't think it was necessary."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Carly has no business near the Senate, if that’s the best the GOP of CA can put forward, it is no wonder the state votes Democrat.
See Post 20.
Wouldn’t matter if HP was an engineering company or a manufacturing company... though all of your points are valid. Carly had ZERO line experience in any industry, just marketing and sales, which she did excel at, but if you don’t know the core operations of your business and how to interact with the people who have to actually execute your ideas, you are going to fail, period.
She should have never been offered the job, and the board of HP members who voted to give her the job, and then to continue to keep her there after she was clearly floundering, should be apologizing to its shareholders for the rest of their lives for putting affirmative action ahead of sound business decisions.
I don't know if what HP lost can ever be replaced.
I certainly don't view them as the paragon of quality they once were, even now. It seems to me that it will take a very long time to rebuild the culture she destroyed.
Carly's "vision" was to take HP from uncompromising quality to uninspiring commodity.
Falling Family CC? Are you serious?
I believe you are rather ignorant of HP, or of Carly’s reign there, if you believe that.
Carly’s reign there was an unmitigated disaster, and it had nothing to do with good old boys, or bad new girls, or any other combination of adjectives related to genders.
It had to do with a person, who had zero line experience in an industry, was given the head reigns of the company. Carly was great in marketing and sales, and had shown repeatedly good aptitude there, but she had absolutely ZERO experience or knowledge about the actual business itself. She was utterly ill prepared or qualified to be the CEO of HP or any other company that was based in something other than sales or marketing.
It wasn’t about changing Culture, HP had (and hopefully has recovered and has once again) a superb culture for research, technology and innovation. What it didn’t have a culture for is buzz words and bullspit, which is what marketing and sales thrive around. Talking about things and doing things are 2 completely different things. Carly’s background was ill suited for CEO of anything other than something in the marketing or sales arena. She would have failed trying to direct any Manufacturing or Technology company.. she did not know her business inside and out, she knew one silo of it, and that is not a good thing when you are running the show.
She could not talk to the engineers, because she didn’t speak the language or real life. Engineers do... marketing can talk about all they want all day long, but the engineers or (line workers) are the ones who have to execute, she had zero ability to relate to them because she had no idea what they did or how they did it.
It was a preventable and needless disaster that the HP board that voted for and continued to support her should apologize for for the rest of their days.
What is so staggering is you could not get a job sweeping the floors at HP unless you were an engineer. Don't even bother. I recall when I was younger. Then they decide to hire a dial tone salesperson to run/ruin the company. She had no clue. Does she even have a college degree?
Talk about a monumental mistake. I think it was because she was a woman at a (supposedly) successful company. A company that was cooking the sales figures and living off of 60 years of Bell Labs work.
I don't think it can.
The things geeks and engineers care about don't compute to liberal-arts majors.
I bring this up every single time I see something printed up on her...
I used to work for CenterPoint Energy in Houston, and in our lobby there was a pile of “trade” magazines, and I thumbed through one and found an article about her and haw she felt about “outsourcing”...
This was back in the mid 90’s in her heyday...
She basically was scolding the people who were being effected by corporate downsizing and outsourcing domestic jobs to overseas personnel, obviously a cheaper way to get the same thing done, and was that ever a bust...
But it was her attitude that got me, she literally said that the American worker needs to just get over it and accept that this is the way things are going to be, and that WE need to adjust and get the training to compete and or pick another career to get into ...
I thought that to be rather arrogant on her part and I sent a nice little note to her about her arrogance and that she can certainly be replaced as well...
Seems to me she is not a hot item to be brought in to run a company anymore, so what does she do???
Run for office...
Yeah...Thats a fabulous idea...That’s exactly what this country needs is her in that arena...
/sarc
I see the press is hard at work attempting to smear the dems opponents in the upcoming election. The death by a thousand slices strategy is being played out, as we watch.
Um, in a word, ‘no.’
If that’s what you really think, then you’ve obviously never dealt with HP or HP products prior to her becoming CEO.
In the 80’s, HP was one of the most respected brands and companies in the tech industry and in Silicon Valley. Their product quality was unassailed and unquestioned, their hard-bound catalogs were known as “engineer porn” for a very good reason, and they have a diversified product line that allowed the company to grow at a nice, steady rate across the test equipment, computer, semiconductor and medical equipment industries.
When Fiorina was installed, her first action was to toss the test equipment group overboard in a “spin-out” that is now known as “Agilent.” This gutted HP’s ability to weather cyclical downturns in revenues from the computer industry. The medical stuff went overboard too, and their formerly famous line of calculators were largely hacked to pieces and mostly discontinued.
All that was left was the computer group. In this, she decided that buying Compaq, a company that was foundering and failing due to their mismanagement, was a suave move. HP’s computers had been subsidized by their printer division, but Fiorina wanted to become some huge competitor in a race to the bottom of the heap - ie, she wanted to compete with Dell. So she rammed through the “merger” (really an acquisition) of Compaq. And the company’s earnings basically cratered, because the “synergies” that she kept yammering about never appeared and never were going to appear.
HP always had a culture of engineers being led by engineers. The “Bill and Dave Way” was to keep innovating product excellence, not the cheapest product. The “Fiorina Way” was to outsource jobs, get rid of engineers and replace them with S&M groups, keep yammering about “synergies” and squander HP’s brand.
She’s an idiot, plain and simple.
The day that the board announced that they had sacked here, there was dancing in the hallways between the cubicles at HP - literally. HP employees were ecstatic that she had been fired, and the emails that bounced around Silly Valley that day were basically saying “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last. I’m buying tonight!”
Allow me to repeat myself: She’s an idiot.
HP will never again be the company that it was, nor the brand that it was. It is now nothing more than yet another commodity PC maker, in a race to the bottom to see who can crank out the cheapest piece of crap they can. I’ve dealt with HP products since the HP 2116 and HP 1000’s in minicomputers, the entire line of HP calculators, the 200 AB/CD oscillators (the very pieces of equipment that launched the company), their o-scopes, spectrum analyzers, logic analyzers, calculators, microcomputers, you name it.
All of it was top-drawer stuff.
Now I won’t give HP computers or printers room on my desk.
That’s Fiorina’s legacy.
Allow me to repeat myself one more time: She’s an idiot.
Worth Repeating. Again.
Sir, having family and friends at Hp, whatever she was, she was an absolute unmitigated disaster for the company from which they are only now beginning to recover.
Well put.
I’m a pleased owner and user of HP/Compaq computers and printers. Pre-Carly, that is. A used 1988 Deskjet, refurbished 1998 laserjet, and used 2000 vintage Compaq desktop. All built like tanks, and still running.
I’ve heard that during one of Carly’s early corporate meetings she had someone stand on a HP printer without damage. Thus having demonstrated product over-engineering (in her mind), which she duely had corrected. Of course these are features that once endeared many to their products.
Her claim to fame (which she developed at AT&T) was to implement a forced ranking system across all organizations. Your group could be all outstanding achievers but outside of 3-sigma 10% of you are now unacceptable. Now you can dismiss 10% of your workforce and feel no guilt. Who remains is now subject to 10% unacceptability. Repeat as necessary. And killing of Test & Measurement? Can you imagine what the company would look like today? She was to get a huge bonus if she could take HP to $37 Bil. Add HP’s $19 Bil and Compaq’s $18 Bil and voila! $37 Bil. They even let her keep her laptop when she left. Ain’t corporate life grand? My favorite Carly quote “Some of us won’t be here to complete the journey”.
Carly @ HP = years of comic strip material for “Dilbert”. Scott Adams could retire “pointy-haired boss” and bring in a new character. On the other hand, perhaps Adams has been giving PHB Carly’s job skills for years.
CARLY FIORINA
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
SEPTEMBER 26, 2001
“TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS AND OUR WAY OF LIFE: WHAT’S NEXT”
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/speeches/fiorina/minnesota01.html
excerpt:
As business leaders, as we are faced with questions of life and death rather than how much our stock is worth, the significance of our business contribution to the world may be increased. And that is a good thing.
I’ll end by telling a story.
There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.
It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.
One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.
And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.
Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.
When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.
While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.
Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership.
And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population–that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions.
This kind of enlightened leadership — leadership that nurtured culture, sustainability, diversity and courage — led to 800 years of invention and prosperity.
In dark and serious times like this, we must affirm our commitment to building societies and institutions that aspire to this kind of greatness. More than ever, we must focus on the importance of leadership– bold acts of leadership and decidedly personal acts of leadership.
With that, I’d like to open up the conversation and see what we, collectively, believe about the role of leadership.
Stop it. You’re giving me bad flashbacks.
I remember reading this the first time she spewed it and thinking “Wha....?”
Bill and Dave never spewed such prattle and codswallop.
No kidding. We have 2 HP printers, a 10 year old Laserjet 8100dn and 3yo Laserjet P3005dn. Want to guess which we had to replace twice?
What’s that old saying - nothing is impossible - if you don’t have to do it.....
My last post was not aimed at you - I agree with your take...
Just trying to say clueless bosses are why Dilbert is so popular.
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