Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of ... (ISBN 1591840031)

NOT Perfect Enough:
Carly has finally left HP in disgrace. She's been lambasted on the cover of Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and Salon. What people inside HP have known since 2001, is finally becoming mainstream. People are beginning to wonder whether HP will survive. Inkjet cartridges are all that's left making a profit. But this book is worth more than 1 star because it contains some information important for HP history. Buy "Backfire" first, then read this.

Growing up in a California Engineering Culture:
As I started to read this book, I anticipated a tainted Carly story. True it did give a positive review of Carly's leadership which may have been a bit too rosey, but it gave a glimpse into the manifestation of business growth pains. The factors of HP's reinvention are a growing concern within the culture of all great engineering environments within the Valley. The change in global business strategies have demanded a change, yet it is a very difficult strain on a healthy culture to be railroaded into corporate consolidation. In fairness to Carly, one person can't perform miracles in a culture that is positive, yet not economically feasible within the current business times. Channeling passion into action is a tough thing to accomplish. I enjoyed the audio version of this book and was captivated by the narrator. I would highly suggest this to anyone who has been caught in the middle of change management within an engineering culture. Kudos to George Anders for capturing this emotional rollercoaster.

Thorough, Zero Insight:
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.

What happened at HP?:
Carly Fiorina went from being the most powerful female CEO to out of a job over her performance at HP. The conflict of culture at HP forced her out of her job over the merger of COMPAQ. The companies were unable to find synergy and the merger was poorly executed. This is a fair account of all participants and in the end comes down with the blame on Carly trying to be too sneaky and HP being to inflexible to embrace the future and realize their computers were useless. The branding dilution argument was very interesting. Although this merger is long over this is a useful and instructive book in corporate finance.

book commissioned by Carly:
I was frustrated by how unbalanced this book was. All of Fiorina's warts were covered up and she was made to look like a hero. At one point, I kept looking at the back cover to see if she wrote the book herself; but she didn't so I can only guess that she must have commisioned it. If you want a Carly love-fest, this is the book, else, read "Backfire" for a more balance viewpoint.