Reply #24: Snippets of an interesting 2005 article on Fiorina [View All]

[Amerigo Vespucci]

The Death of a CEO

How the Lack of a Critical People Skill Contributed to Carly Fiorina's Failure

02/22/2005 by Rob Enderle

http://www.technologypundits.com/index.php?article_id=57



When Carly, who was represented as somewhat of a marketing expert, started at HP she almost immediately alienated some of the most powerful reporters in the industry. She did this by denying interviews to people who didn’t want to tell the story she wanted to tell, a story that they apparently weren’t interested in. Instead they wanted to focus on the uniqueness of being the most powerful female executive in the world that wasn’t a queen and, as a result, these reporters got the impression she was illegitimate royalty and a problem that needed to be fixed. If she had only realized that letting them tell their stories would have allowed her to build relationships that would eventually benefit her own efforts she would have likely behaved differently but that was not the case and this came back to haunt her during her biggest project and when her career at HP ended.

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Carly won the fight (the HP / Compaq merger) but at such a cost that many feel she was a crippled leader from then on. Constant reports of HP employee dissatisfaction leaked out of the company and the proxy fight polarized the employee and investment base forcing many to choose sides against HP’s CEO. Painful leaks haunted her from then on as those that were against her inside the company aligned with reporters outside the company to take shots at her at almost every opportunity.

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The firing of three key executives, one of which had been covering up critical problems, made many doubt Carly really was running the company and once again focused the outside world on her leadership skills. People, or more accurately, her inability to understand and deal with them effectively had once again caused her to look inept in her role as CEO.

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Being able to motivate, understand, manipulate, drive, and anticipate people is a critical skill to any executive, particularly a CEO. As this example showcases not having that skill can be mitigated for a time but the end, in my experience, has always been the end of a promising executive career. Carly could have gone on to politics, to another more powerful position, or to virtually anything she wanted to do had she just understood the people critical to her better. She could have even delegated much of this to another and was given the unusual opportunity to do this had she accepted this as a shortcoming she needed to mitigate.