Piling on Carly
A few days ago, Jim Cramer used his Mad Money platform to trash Carly Fiorina and attribute HP's current great results to Mark Hurd. The way Cramer put it, you would think Fiorina had been holding HP back and Hurd finally liberated it when he took over as CEO 18 months ago.
Cramer joins many pundits who have dumped on Fiorina. They are mistaken. She was the right CEO for HP during her tenure, and Hurd is the right one now.
When Fiorina took over at HP, it was on its way to irrelevance, reduced to being pretty much a printer company with a legendary, quirky, anachronistic culture. HP was a Silicon Valley icon. It has Fiorina to thank that it still is.
Huge, sclerotic, aimless companies like HP had become need a particular kind of leader to survive and thrive. The alternative is either a slow decline, a dramatic implosion or a sale. They need a bold, dramatic leader with clarity of vision and the will to make the big moves to make that vision happen. Fiorina did that, acquiring Compaq after a bitter board and shareholder battle, moving the company from an engineering to a customer focus and blowing up the culture of complacency.
As with many such visionary leaders, Fiorina was a disaster at operations but was unwilling to have a great operations manager run things. These leaders succumb to Peter Drucker's maxim, "Vision without execution is delusion." Hurd excels at operations. He has rationalized the organization, cut costs aggressively and sharpened operational focus. HP is now firing on all cylinders and Fiorina's bold, often belittled ambition of it overtaking IBM as the top technology company seems immanent.
Fiorina blew up the inefficient, indecisive, unfocused HP culture. She made the big strategic moves. She started the revolution. Hurd was the perfect successor, but it took a Fiorina to create the situation in which he now thrives.
Give credit to HP's board for two great CEO choices.
Copyright © 2006 Philip Bookman
Technorati: HP Carly Fiorina
Cramer joins many pundits who have dumped on Fiorina. They are mistaken. She was the right CEO for HP during her tenure, and Hurd is the right one now.
When Fiorina took over at HP, it was on its way to irrelevance, reduced to being pretty much a printer company with a legendary, quirky, anachronistic culture. HP was a Silicon Valley icon. It has Fiorina to thank that it still is.
Huge, sclerotic, aimless companies like HP had become need a particular kind of leader to survive and thrive. The alternative is either a slow decline, a dramatic implosion or a sale. They need a bold, dramatic leader with clarity of vision and the will to make the big moves to make that vision happen. Fiorina did that, acquiring Compaq after a bitter board and shareholder battle, moving the company from an engineering to a customer focus and blowing up the culture of complacency.
As with many such visionary leaders, Fiorina was a disaster at operations but was unwilling to have a great operations manager run things. These leaders succumb to Peter Drucker's maxim, "Vision without execution is delusion." Hurd excels at operations. He has rationalized the organization, cut costs aggressively and sharpened operational focus. HP is now firing on all cylinders and Fiorina's bold, often belittled ambition of it overtaking IBM as the top technology company seems immanent.
Fiorina blew up the inefficient, indecisive, unfocused HP culture. She made the big strategic moves. She started the revolution. Hurd was the perfect successor, but it took a Fiorina to create the situation in which he now thrives.
Give credit to HP's board for two great CEO choices.
Copyright © 2006 Philip Bookman
Technorati: HP Carly Fiorina
Labels: software strategy
posted by Phil Bookman at 10:05 AM
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