Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett Packard (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Nighttime had come. The clatter of screwdrivers at Hewlett-Packard's engineering lab had stopped; the slide rules were tucked away..." (more)
Key Phrases: proxy contest, printer business, other directors, Walter Hewlett, Dave Packard, Bill Hewlett (more...)

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.

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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.com Sales Rank: #1,102,677 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sympathetic but insightful, July 8, 2003

By	Joshua Jaffe (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews

There are two sides to every merger and in the case of Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer, the competing sides weren't just the companies. They include the historians documenting it.

For Perfect Enough, George Anders gained access to HP CEO Carly Fiorina and her fellow board members and executives. It provides a full picture of the genesis of the computing deal. Explaining the frustration board members felt at the company's inability to keep up with competitors benefiting from the Internet boom such as Dell Computer Corp. or release a killer new product since the laser printer in the early 1980s, Anders stresses that the board members - and not just Fiorina- were seeking a radical makeover for HP.

Peter Burrows' competing book about the merger, Backfire, paints Carly Fiorina as a brilliant marketer and communicator who stumbled into HP after one of the worst executive search jobs of all time by Christian Timbers. Her first two years was good idea after good idea followed by poor execution after poorer execution. The Business Week journalist implies the Compaq merger was primarily a way to deflect attention away from her inability to turn the company around after her first two years there.

Anders' more sympathetic account is fascinating at times such as its description of the complex relationship between Fiorina and David Packard's daughter Susan Packard-Orr. But, Burrows' book - unencumbered by any sense of loyalty to Fiorina, who snubbed the author - digs deeper into Fiorina's past by interviewing her ex-husband and childhood friends, thereby providing a much fuller picture of the executive, if not the entire organization.

Taken together, the two books complement each other nicely. It remains to be seen if the same can be said for the merger.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book is perfect enough..., February 10, 2003

By	Dan Rippy (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This book gives comprehensive, balanced treatment to the storied founding and meteoric growth of Hewlett-Packard and its leaders. For those of us who have never worked at HP, we get a clear sense for what it was like when Bill and Dave ran the place. We also come to understand the challenges HP faced as it grew, utlimately becoming, to some degree, a victim of its own success.

There is drama all along the way. It is fascinating to watch the process of the board selecting Carly Fiorina as CEO. There is more drama as one watches her predecessor, Lewis Platt, struggle while watching HP change from "old" to "new."

Some of the book's most interesting perspective relates to the personalities involved in managing and governing HP, from family members running foundations controlling large blocks of HP stock, to board members running large businesses in their own right, to reluctant heroes such as Dick Hackborn, who served as a mentor to Carly Fiorina and became HP's chairman for a time. While the background on the family foundations is excessive, we come to know intimately the cast of characters in the HP-Compaq drama. Whether you supported the HP-Compaq merger or not, it is clear that everyone involved was passionate about his or her cause.

The greatest insights the book offers relate to leadership -- Carly Fiorina's relentless persistence in the face of brutal adversity; the power of passionate belief in one's mission; the unswerving support of all but one HP board member of the HP-Compaq deal; and the realization that organizational change can indeed be wrenching.

Overall, a well-documented, highly entertaining read.

12 of 15 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

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.