Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina has been making the rounds everywhere lately promoting her new book, Tough Choices. Her comments add to the considerable attention these days on the dysfunctional behavior of corporate boards.
VentureBeat caught up with Fiorina when she spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government this week. She’s utilizing the book and tour to present her side of the story, defending her performance and condemning the board — something that is easier to do now that HP is reeling from its little Spygate. Still, her account has been labeled revisionist and contested by many, including Kleiner Perkins partner and former HP board member Tom Perkins. There’s a good summary of this in today’s Mercury News on the backdrop of her Silicon Valley tour.
Responding to critics — many of them in the media — blaming her for failure of leadership, Fiorina contested that it’s hard for people to change a fixed opinion and that reporters had doomed the HP-Compaq merger and her leadership before the integration even started.
So she has focused on board dynamics. Here Fiorina recommends that companies should manage boards by applying techniques used to evaluate management. Examples are 360 degree reviews and evaluations of qualifications. In recent weeks, as stock option back-dating has been exposed at numerous companies, the network of directors participating on multiple boards has been called into question.
Meanwhile, directors sitting on more than one board may “have spread suspect practices like a virus from company to company,” concludes an assessment by the Corporate Library, as summarized in the Mercury News. However, the article points out that there is no proof that the directors advised companies to adopt these practices.
[John Shapiro is a VentureBeat contributing author based in Boston.]
8 Comments
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Diogenes said:
Oh come off it, Carly! You didn’t get fired for being a woman; you got fired for bad performance just like a man. Maybe you should learn to take it like one. P.S. Just like kids can’t choose their parents, sometimes you just get bad boards. HP’s bad board behavior isn’t unfortunately exceptional.
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tomo said:
I wonder if Walter Hewlett was still on the board if the situation would have played out differently…. Has anyone read Carly’s book who can provide info on what she said about Walter? What goes around comes around is soooooo true.
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The Pickleman said:
Carly, just go away. I was an employee of HP for 35 years. You destroyed our company, you destroyed the HP Way, right down to changing the Hp logo.
The purchase of Compaq was a tremendous mistake. The employees told you that from the start, but you didn’t listen. You never listened to any of the higher management people either. Just go away and keep your mouth shut
about HP, you did enough damage while you were the CEO. -
Nilofer Merchant said:
Just like she can’t get 100% of the credit, she couldn’t get 100% of the blame. It’s true she had a tough board, and a tough market. My question is whether she did anything in specific to change to board dynamics. If not, why not? Was she, perhaps, worried about keeping her job to not focus on the thing that would ultimately benefit the organization? I see ethics as making choices above one’s own interest and so far I can’t see one that Carly made. And that has me concerned more than any of the other media reports.
Thoughts?
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techie said:
Carly, thanks for your candor. Your book was insightful and self reflective - a refreshing change from bombastic, full of leadership management jargon, lecture style drivel of other ex-CEOs’ memoirs. You’ve obviously given it your all and made some tough choices under some very difficult circumstances.. I would doubt that any other CEO would have done “better” in the same situation.
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infotechie said:
As a former HP employee I agree completely with Pickleman. Carly, just go away.
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