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Perfect
Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard by George Anders Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Sell Readers of George Anders’ new book, Perfect
Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard may come
away with more questions than answers about the charismatic CEO, but will
likely enjoy every minute spent reading this book. For most engineers, the
notion “perfect enough” is somewhat foreign: something either meets
specifications or fails. The total quality movement affirmed those engineers
for whom a system, process, or product is never good enough, but would
benefit from continuous improvement. Enter effervescent sales leader Carly
Fiorina into the engineering culture of staid H-P, and there’s sure to be
conflict. Anders tells some of that story. He also tells readers something
about the background of both Fiorina and H-P. There’s drama to the story of
Fiorina’s selection by the H-P board, and her controversial and successful
merger with Compaq. Anders writes like a reporter and a novelist, a somewhat
enjoyable combination. Here’s an excerpt (pp. 50-51) about an episode in
Fiorina’s career with Lucent: As
a Lucent executive, Fiorina brought that passion to everyday commerce and
made it seem heroic, too. As her career kept advancing, she became one of
Lucent's most visible public speakers, addressing crowds on topics such as
"The Communications Revolution." In-house speechwriters crafted
much of her message, and while she liked most of their work, in her rewrites
she slashed away the last traces of timidity. She didn't visit faraway cities
to sav, "I'd like to think that access to new information will become ubiquitous."
Instead, she recast the text so that she could evoke all the majesty and simplicity
of a preacher's Sunday sermon: "A century ago, the telephone began to
transform the world. It changed our concepts of time and distance. . .
." If she had come of age a generation earlier, Fiorina
might have felt enormous pressure—as a woman—to tone down all traits that
made her stand out. But her career took off just as doors began to open for
women at big companies. In parts of AT&T and Lucent, old-fashioned men
still plastered their office walls with Rocky movie posters. They were
the Bell Heads, people she once referred to as having "twenty-inch necks
and pea-sized brains." Top executives, however, wanted to transform both
those companies into fresher, more open-minded places. At several key stages
of her career, Fiorina benefited greatly from mentors such as Lucent chairman
Henry Schacht and AT&T network systems chief Bill Marx, both of whom
labored to clear a path for a talented young woman. As Schacht frequently
told associates, "If you aren't promoting women and minorities into very
top management, you aren’t making use of the full talent pool in America. In the treacherous world of workplace interplay
between men and women, Fiorina coped with indignities early on, before
redefining the rules her way as a top executive at Lucent. During her first
months at AT&T, an older colleague invited her to a "business
meeting" at the Boardroom, a strip club in Washington, D.C. She regarded
it as a hazing ritual and an attempt to prove that she wasn't tough enough to
succeed in a man's world. Determined not to be intimidated, Fiorina hailed a
cab and headed to the strip club. "I was clutching my briefcase like a
badge of honor," Fiorina later recalled, "telling myself: I am a
businesswoman. I am. I am.' " Once inside, she talked shop with a
half-dozen AT&T managers and clients, trying not to seem either outraged
or amused by -what was going on around her. When other patrons tried to coax
one of the waitresses to stand on the table and undress, the woman demurred.
She looked at Fiorina, sitting calmly in a navy blue business suit, and said:
"Not while the lady is here.” That story inspired other women at
AT&T. Just by her no-nonsense carriage, Fiorina could evoke better
conduct in a rough crowd. Later, as more women made it into management ranks,
Fiorina lightened up. In the mid-1990s, she became known as the best-dressed
woman at Lucent, with a clothes closet so vast that her husband mischievously
offered to take visitors on a tour. When a colleague's teenage daughter
stopped by the office one day, the girl asked Fiorina for advice about what
kind of dress to wear to the high-school prom. Fiorina put on her most
serious face and declared, "Two words of advice. Expensive and decisive!
That's my philosophy." For months afterward, that edict became a
surefire argument winner in one New Jersey home: "But Mom, just remember
what Carly said. Expensive and decisive!" Finally, as Fiorina grew truly powerful, she
confronted the most disruptive parts of the old-boy network and crushed them.
In the late 1990s, Fiorina had risen to be president of Lucent's global
service provider business, overseeing the company's largest and
fastest-growing business, with $20 billion a year in revenue. She grew
concerned that a new acquisition, Ascend Communications, was bringing a
frat-house culture into Lucent. So a few hours before a giant talk to 2,000
Lucent and Ascend sales representatives, she prepared a surprise involving
three rolled-up athletic socks, borrowed from her husband that morning. She
stepped out onstage in a loose-fitting pantsuit and started her talk gently,
saying that she realized the two companies had somewhat different cultures.
Then she began to get blunter—and earthier. "We at Lucent think you guys
are a bunch of cowboys who don't understand carrier-grade quality," she
said. "You probably think we're a bunch of wusses. Well, I think it's
important that we really get to know each other." With that, she set
aside her suit jacket. Now everyone in the audience could see an unmistakable
bulge in her pants, just where a virile man might protrude. The
bulge—produced by those three athletic socks—was shockingly big. As people
gasped, she delivered her closing line: "Our balls are as big as
anyone's!" The meeting collapsed into chaos at that point.
People howled, shrieked, and gasped. Five minutes later, they still were
sputtering in disbelief. And over the next year, the macho Ascend culture
disintegrated. Sales representatives who learned to do things the Lucent way
stayed. Those who couldn't adjust left. Stories like this make reading Perfect
Enough quite a pleasure. Fiorina is a likeable enough character as
portrayed by Anders (unlike Peter Burrows negative portrayal in Backfire).
On finishing the book, it’s clear that there are major challenges ahead for
Fiorina and H-P, and it will be more interesting to see what happens next
than what happened before. Steve Hopkins, April 19, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the May 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Perfect
Enough.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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