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dispatches from the new world of work

Carly Fiorina and Me

I've put off commenting on Carly Fiorina's book, Tough Choices: A Memoir, because I've had so many confused thoughts. I've decided that's not going to change, so I instead offer you the following dis-jointed, ever-so-partial assessment:

(1) I liked the book. I thought it was a helluva read—not easy when you know the ending. And best of all: She wrote it herself!!!!!

(2) I thought Carly's recounting of her life saga was nothing short of captivating and amazing—worth the price of admission alone. Courage, conviction—all those good words are merited.

(3) In particular, I liked the AT&T part as much as the HP part. I've consulted to AT&T (of old—very) and Western Electric. Other than old Chase Manhattan Bank, it is home to the most brutal organizational politics I've experienced. (And, hey, I worked in the Nixon White House.) Carly, Carly-the-woman, survived and thrived. She is doubtless a Master Politician (all top players, public and private sector, must be) ... but her bottom line performance was exceptional+.

(4) When we get to HP, we get to the tricky part for me. Premise: The "Fabled HP Way" (always the ... Fabled HP Way) was busted. My problem is that one of my very closest friends was the final pre-Carly presiding officer—the late Lew Platt. He and I lived next door at Cornell, nerdy engineers both, and he was my best friend's best man. "All business is personal," someone said—whoops, it was me who said it. Carly arrived and started screwing with the HP Way—for which I can never forgive her. (No matter at all that she was very, very right ... if occasionally somewhat hamhanded in execution. Look, I lived in the Palo Alto area for 30+ years—"one nation, under HP" was our schoolroom substitute for others' "one nation, under God.")

(5) I hate, hate, hate big mergers. But at the time—and today—I vigorously support/ed the Fiorina-driven HP-Compaq merger: (a) Dick Hackborn supported it. (b) HP-as-mini-Xerox/printer company was a travesty. (Don't get me started on the Hewlett boy; among many, many stupid things, he claimed "operating experience" at VTel; that's my local VT phone company—all six subscribers—bet Little Hewlett couldn't find Vermont on a map.) (c) Compaq is a lot, lot more than a PC company. (d) The culture clash bit was destined to be easier than normal. The primary ingredients were: Rod Canion's Compaq, Jimmy Treybig's Tandem, Ken Olsen's DEC and Bill & Dave's HP. (e) The merger mostly worked.

(6) Carly had a tougher job than Welch ay GE or Gerstner at IBM. Jack and Lou were resurrecting Grand Old Cultures that had run aground. (Both did magnificent jobs.) Carly needed to find a new culture to some more or less great extent.

(7) The Board political crap I found boring as hell. All boards are political nightmares, especially as the days of CEO-and-10-golfing-buddies become a distant memory. Shareholder activism (I'm a great Boone Pickens fan) and then post-Enron board-independence-or-Sing Sing adds much fuel to the fire. (It'll only get worse. Wait 'til Spitzer's President.)

(8) My biggest problem with the HP-Carly story is too much "vision," not enough "execution." (I am revealing decades-old biases here.) People mis-read the hell out of me. I was never, never, never a "vision guy." In fact Bob Waterman and I wrote In Search of Excellence almost solely because we were pissed off at McKinsey's (and corporate America's) worship of strategy and vision. (I.e., we Americans had "vision." The Japanese "made cars that worked.") It's no accident that "a bias for action" was the first of our "eight basics." (Still is today.) One critical, as I see it, thing Gerstner did at IBM was to contemptuously dismiss the constant calls for "vision" until he got the operating bugs ironed out. And don't I remember (oh, I do!!) that Bush I was constantly accused of being light on the "vision thing." Not true of Bush II. (B II of course has had some "implementation problems.") (To inject the personal, I am told I was the first Stanford B.School PhD candidate to write a dissertation on Implementation. Cool if true, great urban legend if not.)

(9) I have a little riff I call "4/40"—the only 4 things I claim I've learned in the last 4 decades, that began with me as a platoon leader in Danang Vietnam. And #1 is DECENTRALIZATION. (#2 is Implementation.) I full well understand that life, personal or professional, is a "matrix" of some sort. But if you read Tom Peters, from 1975 to about 1985, I lived only to put the God-awful matrix organization out of its misery—lots of things helped, but I had some non-trivial success. (#3 is Accountability—"accountable matrix" is an oxymoron! Period!) I understand why Carly built the structure she did; cross-functional coordination is a must, was a must in her (and today's) HP. But, put simply, you gotta find another path to achieving that coordination—the matrix ain't it.

(10) Despite my dismissal of "vision," I think the "direction" Carly laid out was fundamentally right, very right—and is a key reason HP is now moving pretty swiftly in the right direction. On the other hand, I don't think her successor, Mark Hurd, walked into an easy situation. Maybe Carly should have stayed as CEO and Mr Hurd would have made an excellent COO. Who knows? Frankly, my "HP Dream Team" in that regard would have been Carly as CEO and Larry Bossidy (Mr Execution) as President.

I liked the book. A lot. I like Carly. A lot. (*And I think her husband Frank is one of the most decent human beings I've ever met.) I think she did 75% of a dirty job that needed doing. And if hell freezes over, she'll never move me a millimeter away from my Adoration of Decentralization-Implementation-Accountability. (BTW, #4 on my 4/40 list is "get up earlier than the other guy—not a C. Fiorina issue; she has as much energy, not said lightly, as Mr Energy, Jack Welch.)

Whatever ...

Tom Peters posted this on 11/16/06.

Comments

'People mis-read the hell out of me. I was never, never, never a "vision guy."'

I remember getting in an argument with someone who was saying you were a vision/mission statement guy and you were the one who invented the concept. It's nice to have this statement in my back pocket. ;)

Posted by Bob H. at November 16, 2006 4:23 PM

I enjoy all your posts, but this one was special because it was very insightful!

Posted by Leonard Klaatu at November 16, 2006 5:05 PM

I did like Chesterton's short response to the aphorism "Don't think. Do."

"DO think! Do!"

Posted by Joe Marier at November 16, 2006 5:27 PM

If you like this post, you'd probably love the book Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. It's one of the best that Tom's recommended I've ever read. Reads like a blueprint for getting a huge organization to DO things (the right things). I noticed Ram Charan is on the program with Tom at the World High Performance Forum going on today and tomorrow in Chicago. I imagine execution will be a major topic.

Posted by cathy mosca at November 16, 2006 5:40 PM

Yes this was indeed a very brillent Post from TP !!

Cathy, yes "Exection" is brillent book. Ram Charan is one of those who kinda just bring the scenario and situations in the correct light, so that one sees all angles !!

Posted by /pd at November 16, 2006 6:34 PM

Tom

I am a fan of Carleton Fiorina... I have never met her but I have read much that she wrote as CEO of HP. The "HP Way" was dead or dying when she arrived so she had to be about "the future". You say she was about Vision I do not know but I did not get that from her - most of what she seemed to speak about and write about was history and philosophy...

Anyhow being about some "future state" and inculcating the "culture" needed to sustain it - she had to be about a matrix organisation... Go ask NASA.. Getting creative people to work effectively on a common purpose is a nightmare unless and until you fiddle around with a Matrix Culture. NASA is still essentially running one for all the right reasons but still getting all the wrong results from it. As we all know they have a poor management record (ie they have lost two shuttles and more than a dozen lives over the journey).. Problem is a Matrix Culture is no way to run a "assembly/distribution" business like HP.

Ms Fiorina was right to try to do what she did. She was courageous, more intelligent than anyone around her, more driven and committed than most people can ever hope to be, more successful than most people give her credit for, etc.

Let us both trust that history will be kind to her - she turned up at HP when it was a mess & she gave it her best shot. I think that is what we all should remember.

Stay well and have fun!
Richard

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 16, 2006 6:44 PM

Wow, if you want to see non-fan "mail" on the book, go to Amazon and read the slew of reviews by HPers, ex-HPers, Compaq-ers, etc. Biased as hell--but also of interest.

Posted by tom peters at November 17, 2006 7:40 AM

Amazon review snippet:

"As a 21-year HP veteran who survived the Carly "cult of personality" years, I would describe this book as self-serving hogwash. In my opinion, her abrupt dispatch was the much deserved result of arrogance and incompetence ..."

Posted by sean_anti_carly at November 17, 2006 10:36 AM

GREAT POST! I just finished reading (listening) to the book a couple weeks ago. I know that Carly does not want to talk about "women in business" but it was fanstastically inspirational from that standpoint as well. From a business standpoint alone the challenges she faced were amazing. Knowing that on top of that she had to overcome the problems associated with being a women is huge. I respect the hell out of her decision not to dwell on that fact but as soon as I finished listening to it I turned around and recommended it to two women I was having lunch with as part of a client project.

I do not spend a lot of time with very large businesses (too many politics) but sometimes a good shakeup is what a company needs even if they end up going partially back the other direction.

Another thing I liked is that she also pointed out some very detailed work at AT&T that saved millions which I loved to hear. Many times executives get too caught up in "big things" while ignoring the blocking and tackling like that.

Just random thoughts - in any case I don't think anyone can argue that she worked with a lot of passion.

Posted by David Brown at November 17, 2006 6:54 PM

Tom

The reviews of Tough Choices are "interesting" as you say! Those long term employees who accuse her of being "self-serving", "arrogant and incompetent" etc may well be correct. She may be the queen of spin. She may be a lot of unspeakable things - I frankly do not know!

However I do know something about what it is like to turn up each day to a client site to drive much needed change: the work is not what it is glorified as in a management text, popular press, et al. This work is full of "tough choices". It makes you as unpopular as hell and that is on a good day. You essentially work alone. You work day in and day out with cynics. You confront opposition every hour of every day -most of it comes from the "folks" who think they are actually working on your side: the others do not speak to you at all.

I do it because I am good at it. I do it because I have a passion for getting the best out of people and situations. I do it probably because I am contrary and as such I have a deep and abiding passion for winning against the odds!

Whether Ms Fiorina and I share any of those things in common I will probably never know. But I suspect we have been to some very similar looking "muck heaps" in our time.

I have one simple question for the HPers, Compaqers, contractors, etc who were there before and during Ms Fiorina's tenure.

Why didn't you look after (e.g. innovate, keep up to date, re-imagine, etc) what was bequeath to all of you within the DNA of the corporate culture that was built around the "HPway" AND where were you as it all slipped into oblivion???

Take care.
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 17, 2006 11:01 PM

Hilarious Richard - Carly & her "leadership" almost solely to blame - and she robbed $42M in golden funds per her firing - literally dancing in her office. Please none of the LAZY [analyses] down under syndrome.

Posted by sean at November 18, 2006 11:18 AM

Sean

Good to see you lightening up... First. Leaders always need followers. Second. Where were the people who now complain about "her" before she got there? Where were they while she was there? I know because I see them inside organisations every day of the week - they were in huddles criticising others BUT never ever themselves. They were never the LAZY analysts because they never do anything that will put them in the firing line. They never stand up and show any of "the courage" of Ms Fiorina.

Should she have go all that money. No! But that is US business - people being unnecessarily overpaid - it is truly sick.

It is easy to be a cynic.

Sean what are you doing about all this. What are you doing to fix some of the problems in your organisation, community, and nation. Love to hear from you...

Take care
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 18, 2006 2:40 PM

Richard - the adept & smart & financially independent ones LEFT HP fast.

The metrics & measures & culture shock of vastly NEGATIVE Carly-spin are clear. Diminished everything because she was too low class & low IQ to figure it out - subtle Sean-speak - thank you for the compliment.

Market cap, stock price, culture-energy - all fabulous now post CF.

"To fix" for me RL - is to live well below one's means so you can easily move to the next opportunity when a CF disaster comes along. I was incredibly lucky to be financially independent @ 26 [3 real estate transactions] - then I spent it all on bling man - just kidding - I bumbled into the "values" deal of healthful & wealthful - so have been surfing that [a bit like Greg Norman] - master of a zillion high-class brands it seems.

To my low IQ - the corporate "fix" is to stay always UP - spread creativity & optimism & have an extra clean pair of black socks in the desk drawer.

Posted by sean at November 19, 2006 11:58 AM

To one and all. Ruefully, I simply had to be true to myself, in the end, on Decentralization. Eg in our dearly beloved nation, when D.C. sucks (often), thank God for our 50 fractious States; despite the 200-hundred-year power grab, the still have some mojo left.

Go Govenater! (And Maria.)

Posted by tom peters at November 19, 2006 1:58 PM

Sean, You gotta love ya back socks... Last word from me on this... I love "Carleton" because she was the necessary circuit breaker at HP.. HP needed Carleton or some one equally prone to make mistakes because they have the strength (i.e. low IQ you say - I say courage) to "just do it" - yeah she did is all wrong!!! but she did it... In life, someone always has to take out the trash...

Stay well and have fun!

Tom, Centralised yet Decentralised is my mantra... Circa 1980, or something, I learnt from Peters and Waterman Jr (In Search..) in a truly great Chapter 12 "simultaneous loose-tight properties". To me it always meant "centralised yet decentralised" too (that dichotomy has always been a very "tricky" bit in Org Theory as you delve into Area or Function, etc).... The cool thing is in "the new world of work" with the advantage of "parallel processing" we can actually do Decentralisation/Centralisation together... We have been liberated from the tyranny of a very old and a very persistent riddle....

Take care
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 19, 2006 2:52 PM

Richard, I agree, but my last 25 years since Search have taught me that there is almost always "centralist drift." (Surely in U.S. gov't--Newt, alas, didn't have a chance.) So one must be eternally vigilant concerning such drift, by which I mean working consciously not to let it clog up the organizational arteries.

Posted by tom peters at November 19, 2006 4:36 PM

And TP & RL, the last Time Magazine had the New Center on the cover - especially in politics "centralist" cycles around.

RL - to me Greg Norman's model is noteworthy - in that he consistently failed on the closing holes of Majors - and yet he has made the most of his Great White Shark [and other] brand[s]- Carly has a lot to learn - she is youngish & attractive though ... so we know how that plays out.

Posted by sean_centrist at November 20, 2006 9:13 AM

Richard,

There's no getting round it. Carly screwed up at HP.

She didn't foster an open culture with staff, she created the "invent" campaign, and then drove the company towards marketing, and away from inventing.

Compaq was a dog with fleas when Carly went for the merger. They'd bought DEC a few years earlier and made nothing of it.

I guess that some people really want to look modern by talking up a female CEO. Nothing wrong with that, if said CEO actually performed.

Take the blinkers off and look at what the share price did under Carly. That's the ultimate measure.

Posted by johnno at November 20, 2006 2:44 PM

Johnno

Thanks for your comments.... You make some interesting points.... Carleton is the person who did the "impossible" job on HP.... I am engaged as an Adviser right now to a client who has a similar job... When you do a job like that with no help from the incumbents - you always screw up!! Yes, always screw up!!

Carleton is female but nothing I said I trust was directed at "yesterday's" gender war...

Through personal ties and circumstances I was in the forefront of the "women's liberation movement" for around 20 years... I guess I feel I have done my time - it saddens me that these same old issues of who's better "men" or "women" are being raised in 2006.. I am truly sad about that.... We, both men and women. who fought so long and hard for what we thought was a just cause, namely, "equality between the sexes" must have screwed up badly...

I understand your point about share price et al...

Carleton did lots wrong... perhaps she did everything wrong... She was leading a revolutionary not an evolutionary process at HP... It is only ever the people who come after the revolutionaries that have the privilege to lead evolutionary change.... Carleton is being treated like all revolutionaries are treated - she is being treated "as if" she was the sole cause of all misery, harm, loss of wellbeing, loss of status, loss of wealth, loss of bragging rights, etc that HPers - workers and stock holders - have felt in their lives since Carleton was appointed... I guess I see her as being primarily responsible for only 99.9% of it.... I simply "love" her for it... If it had of been a male who did all this I would simply "love" him for it all too....

My wife always reminds of the old Indian wisdon - you can never really judge anyone unless and until "you have walked in their shoes!"

I am responding to you Johnno in this long winded fashion because I believe that a blog on Tom Peters site is one of the most appropriate places to have this type of dialogue... Why? Well, Tom is a "showman" (salesman I believe he prefers to call himself) who does much of what Carleton was trying to do at HP...

Tom tries to re-imagine, to liberate (see his thoughts on liberation management), to provoke all those "mindless" clock watchers into "Action" (see his thoughts on "ready, aim, fire" - attributed first to a person from Cadbury), Tom urges you (and me) to think for yourself, to become a leader of your WOW project team, to take care with your Design so that things will be better than merely good AND ALWAYS TO EXECUTE WITH EXCELLENCE!!

Tom is a revolutionary change agent... He is often wrong about what he advocates BUT he is always right to be at the fore front of the revolution! Tom is misunderstood by many - he is a torment to so many people who seek an easier way to achievement, success, etc... I understand I think why Tom might have so many mixed thoughts about what Carleton did and what she achieved at HP...

Carleton Fiorina is a revolunary change agent!! She has tried to explain why she did what she did and what personal demons she faced - who am I to question her about that...

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my missives....

I trust you enjoy watching the evolution of HP into whatever is possible now that Carleton has disrupted it with discontinuity, ambiguity, and uncertainty (all the things you need to do to save a place like HP... It also happens to be all the things the "sharemarket" - whatever that is - simply hates....

Take care...
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 20, 2006 5:59 PM

Richard - please take it easy on Kool-Aid Carly consumption.

An analysis like yours is also perfect for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini - "revolution" oriented - efficient - and like Carly a terrorist ahead of her time - speaking of time - the trains ran on time in the 30's! Taking you and your relatives to a fun Adult Camp! Please take Carly down under - a gift to you and yours! Radical - revolutionary - profitable - increase market cap ...

Posted by sean_futuristic at November 21, 2006 9:20 AM

Sean

I do not like your poster boys.... Mine include Che, Martin (L. King), Bobby (Kennedy), Germs (Greer), Paul (Hogan), Carleton (Fiorina), Jeff(Immelt), Steve (Jobs), Pastor Rick (Warren), etc..

You stick to your list and I'll stick to mine....

Take care....
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 21, 2006 2:57 PM

Richard, your exchange with Sean is interesting and troublesome, not concerning Ms Fiorina but in general. Leaders who "make a difference" (Jesus, Hitler, Joseph Smith, Gandhi, Lenin) attract cult followings. Some "use" their followers for good, some for ill. And given the hell being rained upon us these days in the name of the great religions, I find this a difficult subject at best ...

Posted by tom peters at November 26, 2006 7:15 AM

Tom

I agree with you it is troublesome that much of the world's people, energy, and resources are somehow beholding to some "cult like" stance (i.e. religious based or otherwise)... My hope is that when I contribute to any conversation that I can in some small way urge people to "think for themselves"... It is the greatest wish I have for my two sons.... If each of us can help people, in general, to find the inner confidence to "think" beyond what is useful to these cults then we will have little to worry about when it comes to the big issues of Climate Change, Water, Peak oil, etc...

I am a simple man with one "clear and present purpose" - to be the best dad I can possibly be to our (my wife and my) two sons. So forgive me if I repeat that my aim is to encourage my two sons (i.e. one 18 and one 13 years old) and others everywhere to "think for themselves"... I want them to grow up knowing that they do not have to become the "victims" of poor leadership at their workplace or anywhere else...

Perhaps my purpose and thus my message was not clear and therefore misunderstood... If so I will do better in the future....

Thanks for your time....

Stay well and have fun!

Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at November 26, 2006 8:07 PM