Fiorina Comments On Public Firing

Tells Lesley Stahl She Never Saw It Coming

(CBS)  If it sounds like Hewlett-Packard's board was dysfunctional during Pattie Dunn’s tenure, it was just as bad over a year ago when Carly Fiorina was CEO and Board Chairman, and considered the most powerful woman in American business. Last February, Carly was fired – abruptly and very publicly – with striking parallels with what happened to Pattie Dunn.

That they're both on the Oct. 8 edition of 60 Minutes is due to a quirk of timing in that Dunn’s criminal charges and Carly’s memoir have come out at the same time. And it's ironic that both women were forced out of HP and are lashing out at some members of the male-dominated board.

So why was Carly Fiornia fired? She tells her version of the story in her book called "Tough Choices." She talked about it for the first time with correspondent Lesley Stahl.

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Asked why the board fired her, Fiorina tells Stahl, "You know, Lesley, I wish I could answer the question: 'Why did the board fire me?' I can’t. They never had a conversation with me."

"It was just (clap) out the door," Stahl asks?

"That's right," Fiorina replies.

"It was that cold?" Stahl asks?

"That's exactly what happened," Fiorina says.

She says she felt devastated and hurt by the sudden firing.

One reason she was so blindsided, she says, is because after five years of her leadership, the company was on a roll.

"A company that went from not being in the top 25 innovators in the world, to leaping up to number three," Fiorina says. "A company that was profitable in every business line. A company who's brand had gone from stodgy, white, man, honestly – that's what the research said – to leading edge, relevant. This was a company transformed, from a laggard to a leader."

And transformed, she says, because of her strategies, her vision, and her management skills. So when the board of directors showed her the door, she hadn’t seen it coming.

"None of the normal business reasons apply, I know that. There were no improprieties. There were no ethics issues," Fiorina tells Stahl. "So I can only conclude that it was personal in some way. Certainly, the way it was done was personal."

Carly’s book documents it all: from her hiring, to the firing, which was like a public beheading – a devastating rebuke after an almost flawless career. By her own telling, she was always driven. First, when she wanted to be a concert pianist and practiced every day for hours and hours; then at Stanford, where she graduated with honors.

In college, she took classic Greek so she could read Aristotle in the original; on top of that, she also took German and Italian.

"Once I dive in, I dive in all the way," she says.

That’s what she did at AT&T, where she started out as an entry-level sales rep. She worked her way up, eventually directing the then largest initial public offering in history, the $3-billion dollar spin-off of Lucent Technologies.

That deal put her on the map, turning her into a celebrity CEO who everyone just called “Carly." And it led to her hiring at Hewlett-Packard in 1999. She was just 44, the first woman to lead a company that big.

Founded in a garage during the depression by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, the once-dominant HP fell behind in the 1990s and the board of directors wanted Carly to come in and shake things up. But she came up against a culture that didn’t want to be changed.

"If someone offered a new idea, people would say, 'Oh, we don’t do it that way. It’s not the HP way.' So it became a shield against change," Fiorina explains.

She persevered, though, and in time orchestrated a huge change: the merger with Compaq.

[lifercbs]

This poor lady was terminated from a multimillion dollar yearly salary with only a 42 million dollar termination payoff. No wonder she is pouty. But she was really qualified to lead an 82 billion dollar electronics company. Here's her background from Wikipedia:
"Fiorina attended Stanford University as an undergraduate and studied medieval history and philosophy. Later, she attended law school at University of California, Los Angeles but dropped out to pursue a career in business. She earned an MBA at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Master's degree in Management (M.S.) from the MIT Sloan School of Management under the Sloan Fellows program.
In 1985, she married AT&T executive Frank Fiorina (he opted for early retirement in 1998)."
So thats how she got into management at Lucent. To an outsider, it appears she was "helped" up the corporate ladder by men she knew. Where is the surprise in the board dismissing her after 6 years of running the company into the ground? What has she done lately? Suck up more corporate gravy on other boards. Let's let this bad apple go quietly into anominity and not drag her pouting into the publics view again.

[lkd711]

Ms. Fiorino's description of her firing is all too familiar to anyone who has been fired at HP and other corporations. Firings are taken personally regardless of how they are handled. What makes Ms. Fiorino so special? At least she was paid a generous severance package instead of having to take whatever the company offers, if anything.

[md20062]

I am throughly disgusted with Ms. Fiorina's recent interview. Her EGO is simply more than I can take which is exalty why she was ousted. The fact that her firing was cold and callace should come as no surprise to her as she set the precendent in HP for laying off and firing employees in that such manner. How does she feel getting a dose of her own medicine. As an HP employee and I can tell you that the stirdes the company has made are due soley to Mark Hurd and his leadership. ALL the executives and leaders Carly brought over from Compaq have been replaced and as a company we are still struggling with the impact of a poorly executed and thought out aqusition. I can also state strongly that Carly WAS NOT running this company from an operational perspective and that is why she failed to lead HP on this journey. I will give her this, she is a dynamic speaker and can absolutely sell anything, but once you buy her pitch your on your own to figure out exaclty what it is you've been sold.

As an HP employee I am embarressed by the recent events of our board and am also appauled at the blatent disrespect from the board for the company and all it's employees. This situation was 100% preventable given board memebers had any care for their position and were not hell bent on taking each other down due to personality conflicts. Watching the congressional hearings and watching your recent HP piece has truly been an education in politics and egos for me.

[jaygars]

"You know, Lesley, I wish I could answer the question: 'Why did the Board fire me?'

Could it be because she drove the stock price down from $156 to $16 a share. That she consistantly missed earnings by hitting only three quarters out of twenty-four (Mark Hurd has hit six quarters out of six). That Wall Street had no faith in her. Her best asset is marketing is self promotion with she does well.

Her stategic direction was all over the place. One year she tries the purchase PriceWaterHouse for $18B to have foothold in the consultanting business which IBM purchased the following year for $3.5B. The next year she buys COMPAQ. These directions are the opposite.

Carly should be happy with her $53M check the board gave her. What horrible why to be fired?

[jaygars]

"You know, Lesley, I wish I could answer the question: 'Why did the Board fire me?'

Could it be because she drove the stock price down from $156 to $16 a share. That she consistantly missed earnings by hitting only three quarters out of twenty-four (Mark Hurd has hit six quarters out of six). That Wall Street had no faith in her. Her best asset is marketing is self promotion with she does well.

Her stategic direction was all over the place. One year she tries the purchase PriceWaterHouse for $18B to have foothold in the consultanting business which IBM purchased the following year for $3.5B. The next year she buys COMPAQ. These directions are the opposite.

Carly should be happy with her $53M check the board gave her. What horrible why to be fired?

[fedora1958]

Corporate America throws countless thousands of people overboard. Why is this one supposed to be so interesting and important?

[zafdor]

This piece was a real laugher. There's poor Carley with her head down. Clearly not qualified to run HP, she did a remarkable amount of damage to a great company. Hey Carley, I can tell you why you were fired, you cut the value of HP stock by 65%. You merged with a company that essentially is a boat anchor to HP. I work for a competitor and we had a feast when the merger was happening, so I guess I should be greatful to her. The board most certainly did thank you for your service, to the tune of $42M. In the world of unbelievable egos, she fits right in! I wonder if she ever called Walter Hewlett to apologise?

[hweiner]

She orchestrated the ouster of board member Walter Hewlett, the son of one of the founders of HP, because he opposed the merger of HP and Compaq. This was cruel and heartless and how she treated her opponents. Lucent, on her watch went downhill, and still is in that position. Investors in Lucent watched the stock plunge. After Carly was sacked, I bought HP stock again, after I sold it when it plunged, with the expectation that it would go up again--and it has!

Carly apparently lacks introspection and insight. She doesn't seem to examine her own behavior and flaws. She destroyed the wonderful culture of Hewlett Pack where workers had job security and high morale. In respect to her ruthless layoffs, it might be fair to say that she should have been the first one.

Like Chainsaw Al Dunlap, Carly is an example of the sickness of corporate America which has destroyed job security at the expense of CEO profits. It is high time that CEOs be called to account for their high salaries, misgovernance, incompetent performance, and spectacular lack of morality.

Just think of how many workers could have been hired with Carly's salary! Think how much of her salary could have gone to health benefits for the
workforce of HP. And if her salary couldn't cover this, her severance package could have!

[kerigpope]

After watching your interview with former Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Carly Fiorina complain about how her firing was, in her opinion, so impersonal, all I can say is 'Boo-Hoo'. Finally a high-powered businessperson gets a taste of the tactics of indifference that most of Corporate America uses to make employment changes within their companies. Carly, welcome to our level. Maybe I should write a book too.