Jan 17 2007
By Ira Winkler
I just saw two articles referencing Carly Fiorina in USA Today. The first one said that Carly has been picked to be on an advisory board for the Director of the CIA. She was one of 3 people announced, and the article implied that she is wanted for her management expertise. There is not a single person I can imagine who demonstrated more management ineptitude in modern history. Besides of running HP into the ground, she actually ran Lucent into the ground prior to HP.
Most people don’t know that the reason she was picked for HP was that she was attributed with being a large part of Lucent’s success. A few months after she left, Lucent tanked as it became obvious that Carly set up a pyramid scheme at Lucent, where Lucent was financing the purchases of their own equipment. The bubble burst and Lucent along with it.
At HP, she was essentially paid $1,000,000 for every $1,000,000,000 she LOST the company, and that only includes the legacy HP value, and doesn’t include the decline in the pre-merger Compaq value.
Not so ironically, the second reference to Carly in USA Today was for narcissistic CEOs. Apparently while Carly was touting her recent book, she was asked whether she bore any of the blame for HP’s terrible performance during her tenure there. Her response was to the effect that she should have come down quicker on the poor performance of other people. You can’t make this up. This link has a previously unpublished article that I wrote about Carly and HP.
So now Hayden, the new CIA Director, wants expert advice. Besides of the fact that the intelligence world is seeking management advice from possibly one of the worst corporate managers in CEO history, this definitely security related. The hiring and firing of people is critical to security. Obviously by not considering the demonstrated results of people, you are allowing history to repeat itself. Too many people don’t do complete background checks and hire incompetent people who will likely create harm. In this case, you have to hope that the position is just something that she is going to stick on her resume. The intelligence world cant afford to waste hundreds of billions of dollars following her advice.
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Posted by Ira.Winkler on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007, at 10:40 pm, and filed under Articles.
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