Posted on 09/16/2015 6:40:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
That matters, for several reasons.
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.
If you live in NYC, you know a number of people who were handed vast sums to TAKE OFF with. Almost all of them lost it.
Taking a good deal of money and turning it into a whole lot more is not easy at all.
Ask lotto winners, football players, most who inherit a fortune.
Since when is it frowned upon to increase one’s wealth?
don’t trust Carly at all.
The numbers tell the truth about Carly’s tenure at HP and the truth isn’t pretty. There’s a reason HP stock jumped 6.9% the day she was fired.
FioRINO made the key mistake of investing heavily in technology that was being quickly commoditized since she was just looking for market share by acquiring Compaq. She clearly didn’t know how to handle an integration and thought that size would keep the company safe - obviously not too big to fail since it failed. This lack of insight and her failure at Lucent shows that she reached her competence level as a division president or VP but not as a CEO. She lacks foresight and seems to just say whatever is popular at the moment.
Fiorina screwed up HP.
Don’t listen to IJReview.
But they certainly tried to make her look great tonight. And she will be the front page of all lib rags tomorrow.
And she will stay at 3 or 4 percent.
Yeah. It was so good they fired her.
She was a disaster as CEO. Period. I’ll trust Trump (and my own research when she ran for Senate here) this time.
Crony capitalist crook Carly has hired her ?
http://www.businessinsider.com/liz-mairs-epic-scott-walker-tweetstorm-2015-3
This nutter was fired from the Walker campaign when her far left DC insider views were outed !
Lord you RNC Jeb posters are getting desperate .
Carly and Kasich are getting a lot of attention tonight, I wonder who CNN wants to win the nod?
Lucent , where is that Carly?
The 1999 Internet Bubble had nothing to do with HP
Both Mr. Hewlett and Parkard died as some richest men in the World
She loves Amnesty , gay marriage, H1visas , Obamacare !
That tell us all we need to the Crook Carly !
I wouldn’t look at the ups and downs of the stock market as a basis for determining how well a CEO did.
Fiorina became CEO at one of the worst times for the a company’s stock — the 2000 DOT COM Tech bubble bursting.
As per the article, Under Carly, HP’s cash flow also quadrupled. Current assets increased by 60 percent. HP’s growth rate went up.
THAT is what should be refuted.
Carly you been interrupting everybody here tonight
You need to shutup
Some amazing bits of fiction interspersed with liberal ideology - I guess a good article to pull out to convert liberals to the ‘cause’ if she wins the nomination, but I don’t see anything here that would encourage a conservative to actively campaign for her. Well, aside from revisionist fiction and falsehood that might trick those who haven’t paid close attention.
RE: Don’t listen to IJReview.
I’ll listen to everyone with a good and reasoned argument, including you.
Can you explain how Fiorina screwed up HP in hindsight?
RE: She was a disaster as CEO. Period. I’ll trust Trump (and my own research when she ran for Senate here) this time.
The subsequent CEO’s and Board members, looking in hindsight, seem to disagree with Trump as per the article.
All you need to know about her is she loves islam
Lucent and its major competitors all started goosing sales by lending money to their customers. In a neat bit of accounting magic, money from the loans began to appear on Lucent’s income statement as new revenue while the dicey debt got stashed on its balance sheet as an allegedly solid asset It was nothing of the sort. Lucent said in its SEC filings that it had little choice to play the so-called vendor financing game, because all its competitors were too.
Me neither. That is why I deleted 3 emails from her today.
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