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Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard
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Author: George Anders
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1591840031
Publisher: Portfolio (23 January, 2003)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 46,009
Average Customer Rating: 2.83 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 2 out of 5
An HP CEO not focused on HP business
This book falls into an interesting category, those books that are irresponsible by omission. George Anders' primary irresponsibility was his failure to point out that Carly Fiorina has never been focused on solving key HP business problems. This was clear in the Compaq merger debate this book reviews where she failed to answer the issues that Walter Hewlett and other critics raised in a substantive way. It is even more true today -- it is clear from her recent activities that Carly Fiorina has essentially given up on HP and HP business problems and instead is focusing completely on personal interests. In reviewing the topics of her last 10 business speeches, only one (her Oracleworld keynote) promotes HP business interests. The other 90% focus on a variety of personal interests - her desire to be viewed as a great humanitarian, gender celebrations, etc. At the very minimum, HP shareholders, who have suffered a loss of 49% in the value of their shares during the Fiorina administration, deserve to have her focus her efforts on HP business. Surely this huge investment of her time in marketing herself as a great humanitarian etc can wait until she leaves HP. It only demeans HP to have a CEO (who HP has paid over 100 million dollars in cash, stocks and options) cost its shareholders 49% plus the time value of money of their investment and add insult to injury by public demonstrating to all her lack of interest in her job. Anders' book could have been a valuable contribution if it had simply emphasized Fiorina's lack of interest in the true duties of her job.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Bad judgement and bad taste characterize Carly Fiorina
I was disappointed in this book. The author does not challenge the often bad judgement and bad taste of Fiorina. For example, she was reported by CNET to have hired the cast of a television gangster family to serve drinks at LinuxWorld. This is not a proper use of corporate funds, a key issue for a CEO. It would not be appropriate for taste reasons even if these high-priced actors worked for free. HP under Fiorina is clearly out-of-control, but we would never know this from this book.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Disloyal Enough:... Should have been this book's title
One of the most remarkable aspects of Hewlett-Packard has been the
increasing disloyalty of its non-founder CEOs, which is a topic that despite
its obvious enormous importance to his book, Anders does not address.
Carly Fiorina received a pay package at sign-on of over 60 million dollars,
mostly stock grants. Yet, despite this massive payday from HP shareholders
we find thereafter that she joins the Cisco Board of Directors, a clear
conflict of interest. HP has a product line of networking equipment that
directly competes with Cisco. Many of the growth areas of HP's business
depend on advanced networking where there is direct conflict with Cisco.
Also, Cisco is focused in three main areas including storage systems where
Compaq (now HP) is a leader. It is astonishing that she would sign-up and
remain in such a severe conflict of interest situation. CEOs are NOT
supposed to do this. One or both companies gets cheated in such a
situation. Shareholders of both companies have a right to sue, not only
Fiorina, but HP in such a situation.The other major aspect of Fiorina's disloyalty has been her disloyal refusal
to compete aggressively with key competitors, most notably Sun
Microsystems. This company in the past has beat HP badly in the UNIX
server marketplace, but is currently very weak due to competition not from
HP but from Linux. Any loyal HP executive would take this incredible
opportunity to try to run them out of business before they recover. Instead,
Fiorina is going out of her way to help them! For example, her effort to
ship Java on HP PCs (WSJ 6-12-03). Anders should have noted this let's-
help-a-key-competitor (Sun) aspect of Fiorina which was evident in her
Bluestone acquisition for 400 million (a total waste) which occurred before
the merger, with plenty of time to be included in Anders' book. While these disloyal actions have hurt HP severely, note that they are
strongly beneficial to Fiorina personally. One can only assume that Job One
with Carly is to remain on very good terms with the Cisco and Sun
Microsystems Boards, both of which are likely to have a CEO opening in
the next couple years. This situation should have been given central
position in Anders' book, not ignored completely.
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