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Forbes Now Thinks Carly Saved HP
Justen writes "It's been nearly a year and a half since Carly Fiorina was fired as CEO and chairman at HP. Now, Forbes is saying Mark Hurd and HP today are reaping the success of the strategies she developed and decisions Carly made. 'Fiorina's demise was chalked up to bad execution of bad strategic moves, most notably the 2002 Compaq acquisition. But Hurd has always said there was nothing wrong with Fiorina's strategy. He seems to be hewing close to it. He rejiggered the org chart but said he'll keep the company together instead of breaking it up along premerger lines, as Fiorina's loudest critics suggested doing.' Forbes adds that HP's revenues, profit, and market share have held steady or improved since Hurd came aboard, but asks: 'Whose results are these? You could make a case that they are as much Fiorina's as Hurd's. The effects of strategic moves like buying Compaq stretch out over years.' So, which is it? Did Carly kill the HP way? Or did she save what was left of it?"
I couldn't agree more with this post. And, as an ex-HP employee, I will add that Carly's attitude did damage at all levels. During her tenure, HP's management changed from being at least somewhat of a meritocracy to being 100% politically driven. I watched the old guard IT managers replaced by individuals who were little more than political appointees. When I left HP, none of the managers above me (all the way to the top) had any hands-on IT experience. Neither did any of their peers. My manager had a masters degree in English. She had been a copy editor before her rise to management. This individual managed the team which was responsible for handling all of HP's customer facing support content. The damage that she and others like her did and the speed at which it happened still amazes me.
If she was any good she'd be the CEO of another great company instead of doing BS speaking engagements. HP survived Carly.
Carly was one of the worst things to hit corporate america since Ken Lay. I watched her run HP into the ground and line her own pockets while doing it. Division doing well? They can obviously cut costs and headcount. Look, next quarter, they have higher margins, so give yourself a bonus, and repeat in Q2. Division doing badly? Cut people, and reorg. Tough decisions deserve a bonus.
Carly was about polishing her own star, from putting herself in front of the company when there was capital to be spent, cash or political, to building a cult of personality. Ask the people shoved out of the way by her bodyguards IN THE HP HQ! Ask the people who installed an executive bathroom in her plane hanger, normal bathrooms wouldn't do there, oh no.
Ask the HP Australia people about the world class logistics operation they built, and then completely outsourced without adequate contract provisions. Look at how much the Magellan contract cost them, and the reasons for losing it. If you want real fun, look at what the board told her before they handed her ass walking papers. Tis to laugh, no tis to feel sad for the greedy ruining the lives of the hardworking.
Hurd, who on some levels I am no fan of, has spent the last year and change completely undoing all the things Carly did. The difference is that Carly had all the shyness and hard working mindset of Paris Hilton, while Hurd gets the job done.
Anyone putting the sucess of HP on Carly rather than Hurd is an incompetent researcher, revisionist historian, or has an agenda. Oh wait, this is Forbes, you know, the ones who are still defending SCO. Replace the 'or' a couple of sentences ago..... Also look at the politics, this has all the hallmarks of a paid for image campaign to prep her Carlyness for a senate run. Forbes isn't shy about politics, and it would take a political strategist with long term thinking in a high place to do this. I won't name names though.
I was privy to a lot more of HPs dirt than I wrote about, and even then, I wrote a lot. I honestly can't think of a more worthless, to the corporation, manager that had the company survive their tenure. The only reason it did was a long history of innovation (real, not MS), good people, and good product lines. Most of that is gone now, but Hurd looks to be bringing a lot of it back. It is an uphill climb, but if you look at Dell vs HP right now, it is the correct thing to do.
The article that prompted this is several shades beyond sad, and completely ignores what Hurd has done. Do the research people, ask HP about the changes, they are real, but they are not spun for the benefit of the general audience like the old days. Then ask yourself why this would be coming out right about now, and from whom.
-Charlie
I have one word to trash Fioina's job performance. Agilent
On July 19, 1999: Fiorina, 44, becomes president and CEO. On June 2000 HP spins off Agilent Technologies. This is a real stroke of genius. HP since then has just become a computer company.
Agilent has since been spinning off its chips business for 2.6 billion. Agilent also sold both the high growth Lumileds for 1 billion and the profitable Healthcare Solutions Group for 1.7 billion. Healthcare has since become one of Philips most profitable divisions. This spin off as a whole cost HP 4 to 5 billion in cash since HP could have easily made the same money splitting it up. This is really illustrative of weak and innefective Agilent leadership and the incompetence of Fiorina. HP still derives most of it's profits from printers and low margin computers and if they had medical instruments they could have expanded the business into MRI's like Philips has and which Siemens has also done. Instead Philips is carving up the best of Agilent and laughing all the way to the bank. Medical insatruments is a high margin business with fewer competitors. The Hewlett's and Packard's are both right she created a new HP that is totally dependent on computers with very little diversification. HP could have expanded into Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), X-ray, and ultrasound systems and radiology and general imaging.
Fiorina is a totally incompentent executive who's only claim to fame is the Compaq acquisition. Even then without Hurd it might not have worked.
HP had to pay this person tens of millions of dollars just to get her to go away. At the same time they were firing long-term dedicated employees and offering them re-hirement only as perma-temps with no benefits! This was Carly's policy. The woman is a thug and thief. Good riddance.
Now I realize that this standard operating proceedure for America's managerial class. But it doesn't change the fact that it is insane. We had all thought that this plantation mentality didn't hold with the high-tech industry. Boy were we wrong! They wiped out the entire industries stock value and threw away the best workers like used toilet paper.
Carly is simply the flash point of this madness. At least she wasn't assassinated like Kenneth Lay in order to keep her from talking about where all the money went and which politicians got paid off under the table.