Leadership & Change

Leadership & Change

Q1. Was CEO Carly Fiorina an example of internal or external succession at H-P and why?

Ans. Carly Fiorina was an example of external succession at Hewlett Packard as she, at the time of joining the HP was not actually working at HP but at another company engaged in printer business. Although she was the new Chief Executive Officer of the company, Fiorina lacked technical background and skills that a leader of a high-tech firm should posses in order to look into and settle down technical matters. And the decision to appoint a retired HP worker as the chairman also backfired as there were no innovative ideas coming their way. In contrast to face up the challenge and address the same, Fiorina backed on the “Hawks” of HP, who were eager to change the traditional culture of the organization. Although her idea of recruiting yes-boss man, who is unable to interfere in her so-called bullish meetings, was a success story for her for some time but when she went on to had the lust of acquiring Compaq Group, her decisions and plans backfired and she was held totally responsible for the downturn of the company in that particular deal (Anders, 2003).

One of the main features of Fiorina's tenure was the lack of accountability that prevailed among the top brass of the company and there was no one to address the issue. The untimely and frequent meetings with no solid agenda had had a bad impact on Fiorina's credibility as a successful leader.

Q2. What is your opinion of what ultimately happened to her at HP, as illustrated by the second article?

Ans. It has been proved in the last few months due to the battle between the descendants of the founding fathers of HP and the current leader Carly Fiorina that the era of the owner manager is long past. Each and every issue is decided in the wake of arguments and counter arguments and the argument with the greatest set of justification whether right or wrong normally ends up winning the case. The event of an argument winning case is therefore not decided on the merit or the logic per se, rather a more obtuse method, namely the selling of the argument determines, whether an argument will actually lead the day or not (Burrows, 2005).

The selling of the argument is more often than not determined through the leadership ...