Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett Packard [Hardcover]

George Anders (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2003

Carly Fiorina is the most admired-and most vilified-woman in corporate America. Recruited in 1999 to run Hewlett-Packard, the legendary company that helped invent Silicon Valley, she promised big changes from the moment she arrived. She was a marketing whiz at a company that worshipped engineers, an instant celebrity in a culture that preached modesty, and a woman in one of the most sexist industries.

No wonder the purists hated her. Yet for twenty years, she had consistently won over those who doubted her. And at HP she believed she could connect two hostile cultures, remaking the high-tech pioneer while staying true to the HP way, the old-fashioned values of company founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Her zesty new style would be "perfect enough."

Could Carly make it? Her boosters and enemies asked that question with nail-biting intensity. In 2001, she entered an epic struggle with Walter Hewlett, son of HP's late cofounder, over the company's destiny and her stunning plan to merge with archrival Compaq. For months Fiorina and Hewlett battled in the boardroom, in the media, and, ultimately, in court. They couldn't stop until one side destroyed the other.

In this fascinating human drama, George Anders draws on unmatched sources to probe beyond the headlines. He reveals Fiorina to be both braver and more vulnerable than outsiders ever realized. And he discloses the role played by a powerful recluse in Idaho: the only person at HP who could bridge the old era and the new.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In late 2001, Hewlett-Packard shareholders were divided over a proposed buyout of computer manufacturer Compaq. Carly Fiorina, who'd been appointed HP's CEO two years earlier, had convinced most of the directors that the merger was necessary in order for the firm to remain competitive. But Walter Hewlett, son of one of the company's founders, came to believe the move was against everything the "HP Way" stood for. He drummed up support and turned the vote over the merger into a test of Fiorina's leadership. Anders, a Fast Company editor, uses this battle as the centerpiece of his account, but the book's subtitle is largely a misnomer. Although Anders recounts Fiorina's transformation from a talented executive at Lucent Technologies into one of America's most powerful female CEOs, she's only a small part of the story-and, in the long run, perhaps not the most interesting. The efforts of the second generation of Hewletts and Packards to cope with the pressure to remain loyal to the company's original vision and the multibillion-dollar legacy left by their fathers present much more compelling material. Chapters on HP's history, intended to provide a backdrop to Fiorina's fight to establish herself, overwhelm her story and reduce it to part of a recurring cycle of boardroom turbulence. Anders provides workmanlike reportage on the events, but falls short of linking it to a big picture worth caring about and never rises to offer a standout story.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A riveting look at the rise and near-fall of a great American company." -- Wall Street Journal

"Anders provides a behind-the-scenes account of the battle for HP, putting the reader inside the minds of several key players." -- BusinessWeek

"Wonderful reporting . . . The book is better than ‘perfect enough’; readers will find it gripping and illuminating." -- The Globe and Mail (Toronto) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (January 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591840031
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840039
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #512,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Culture > Biographies

More About the Author

I've been writing about dreamers, idealists and rascals since 1981. Look for my journalistic work these days at forbes.com and Forbes magazine. Other writing homes over the years have included The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View and Fast Company magazine. I've also launched a travel blog, written four books and spun out several hundred bedtime stories for our kids.

In 1997, I shared in the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago. As an adult, I spent time in New York City, London, Cambridge MA and Washington DC, before settling in northern California. I'm a slow but stubborn hiker. Adventures over the years have included making it to the top of Mt. Fuji, Mt. Whitney and the Thorung La pass in Nepal. Some of my favorite writers include Thomas Boswell for sports; William Manchester for biographies; Caroline Baum for financial commentary and Michael Craig for poker.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Book should have analyzed Fiorina speeches for insight, July 24, 2004

By 

Charles Knox (Menlo Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett Packard (Hardcover)

One of my concerns about this book is its frequent depiction of Carly Fiorina as not only an excellent communicator, but a charismatic one as well. This is nonsense. She may be charming at times, but this is a charm without substance, and her public communications are often both trite and insulting to important customers, potential customers or potential employees. If author Anders' had analyzed some of her speeches in depth, I think he would have come to the same conclusion. This is not just some historical problem, she just delivered (6-19-04) yet another of these seriously unhinged addresses at UCLA for the Commencement of the Engineering College there. The text of this speech is available (for now at least) on HP's web site alongside her executive biography.

UCLA has one of the best engineering schools in the country and they have a large number of serious students of engineering. Yet Carly decides to start out her address with a joke about Donald Trump's hair and soon starts rambling at length and incoherently about her impressions of reality television. She continues on with references to disco, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, William Hung and yet another reference to Donald Trump's hair.

This Carly performance is an extreme embarrassment to HP and its investors. After hearing this speech, which implied they were a bunch of airheads, why would any UCLA student or faculty member want to come to HP? Why would they want to buy an HP computer when they could buy a Dell or an IBM? Why would Donald Trump want to buy HP equipment for his firms or give HP valuable free advertising by making a complimentary reference to HP equipment?

This would have been a much better book if George Anders had read and analyzed her speeches. While most are doubtless written by others, she approves all of them, and can certainly reject inappropriate material rather than broadcast it to the world. If there is anyone left that still thinks Carly Fiorina is effective as a Celebrity Spokesperson sort of CEO, they should read her UCLA address.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thorough, Zero Insight, July 16, 2005

By 

fairleft (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett Packard (Hardcover)

American tech industries were in the middle of tough times and facing a very uncertain future, as they still are, and the HP board did not understand what kind of "new HP" would deal best with that new world. None of this is in the book, but this should've been reasonably clear by 2003 when the book was published. And Carly, with a little insight, should be seen as just another bubble economy internet dream seller. She quickly developed "an internet story" to sell herself to HP, and ostensibly for HP to sell to the world, and the board was _so_ delighted. Between the lines (we can find out a lot there, as this book is fully documented, and so it earns three stars) the board comes off as quite naive, and Carly as what she is: a saleswoman who pumps herself up to "believe" what she's selling, but others should be a whole lot more skeptical.

Anders writes without insight. For example, all of this Carly story selling is coming chronologically on the downside of the tech bubble. At that point, but at least for Anders by 2003, the b.s./fakery should've been ripe for exposure. Also arising from the facts but absent is some big picture thinking on the whole matter of naive boards & naive directors (including Hewlett) attempting to decide the future of a company as technically complex and in as many businesses as HP. Finally, no exposure of the following: it seemed clear (between the lines) that part of every side's plan for HP -- whether it stayed in one piece, merged with Compaq, or not -- was to slash employees and ship lots of jobs to cheap labor sites overseas. Both sides knew this would be an obvious part of "the solution" but nobody would say it publicly (though they tried euphemistically to give the right signals to Wall Street). Understandable in a proxy fight with many employees holding stock, but you expect Anders to notice and discuss such important unspoken matters (and why they are unspoken), at least in a book aspiring to be more than simple, competent, day-to-day reporting.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars So much fluff - like the great woman herself, December 14, 2004

By 

Gopher38 (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett Packard (Hardcover)

Carly Fiorina took over HP in July 1999. Some interesting numbers since that time:
Lexmark shares up 40%
Canon shares up 16%
Dell shares up 3%
IBM shares down 23%
HP shares down 60%
(Look it up on money.msn.com)
Ms. Fiorina also entered saying that HP should dump the printing business in order to concentrate on e-commerce. 3 years later, that business was being described as HP's crown jewels. She also claimed that what HP needed was more accountibility (see numbers above). And we're supposed to be interested by her views on business?