The Culture of Evasion

theodp writes "In the wake of Patricia Dunn's resignation, Wired's Fred Vogelstein walked away less than impressed with HP CEO's Mark Hurd's spying mea culpa. He says it smacked more of standard corporate ass covering than leadership, especially coming 3 weeks after the scandal broke. His sentiments are echoed in Computerworld's Culture of Evasion, which was written before Hurd mounted an I-knew-nothing-defense. Hurd claims that he bailed out on a meeting that approved the spying, neglected to read the spying report directed to him, and was clueless about the tracer technology employed in the reporter-baiting false e-mail he personally gave thumbs-up to."

Comments

Re:Just the "Haves" Protecting Themselves again

[Hope Thelps]

I'm shocked that she didn't resign or that she wasn't fired the day she stepped down from the chair.

More astonishing is that Mark "I don't recall" Hurd seems to have managed to get a promotion out of this, adding Chairman to his list of titles.

Engineers do it to

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at an high tech company with a reputation for good engineering. The engineers do the same thing. It's really a sign of arrogance more than evasion. These people truly believe that they couldn't have possibly done something wrong, so it must be someone elses fault.

Here's the best part

[DiamondGeezer]

All of the perpetrators involved are much, much richer than you. Not brighter. Not more ethical. Not more deserving.

Re:The responsibilities of a CEO

[working dog]

Maybe he likes to think before he acts, maybe even consult a lawyer or two. Do the stockholders really want a CEO who shoots from the hip? Especially on issues as important as this? We're talking about a multi-million dollar company here that is front page news. The decisions are big, maybe big enough to make or break the company. I'd take a week or three to think if I were making decisions on that scale.

No, stockholders want a CEO who can best lead their company through difficult business cycles as well as the inevitable ethical or political flareup. Seeing that spying on corporate directors and reporters using fraudulent means (pretexting), attempting to install malicious software on others computers via e-mail is hardly unethical hardly requires a week or three to wrestle with. Stockholders of multi-BILLION dollar companies do not pay their CEO's tens of millions of dollars (options included) to let things spin out of control in the press for several weeks while they ponder options.

He hired a pro to do the job right. I'll bet he hires a geek to run his IT dept, and an accountant to do his bookkeeping. Probably even has a professional janitorial staff clean his office. One of the primary rsponsibilities of management is to find good people and then delegate.

Again, CEO's are the public face of the company and are paid accordingly to be its leaders. In times of crises, leaders are looked to for answers and guidance. If yo're "hiding" behind lawyers you're abrogating that role, implying that maybe you don't have what it tkaes to be a CEO at best, or what your company has done is fairly illegal at worst.

When you have an employee who is doing things that - in your opinion as managment - hurt the company, it is your obligation to the stockholders to find out who it is and stop them. Whether they be leakers, thieves, whatever, the CEO is responsible to the shareholders. Had nothing been done to stop leakers, and had that course of action turned out badly, then he looks even worse.

Again, these are not employees of HP. They are directors from the board of directors responsible for the overseeing the management and company operations on behalf of the stockholders (they're voted in by the stockholders) and while they receive compensation as directors they are not employees in the strict sense. If you are spying on your directors one can only imagaine what you are doing to your rank-and-file employees.