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| Review |
| Carly,
Carly, quite unpleasant |
| PROSENJIT DATTA |
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| George
Anders Portfolio |
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IN the last chapter of the book, author George Anders
recounts an incident that sums up perfectly Carly
Fiorina’s personality and her obsession. In
2001, the Hewlett-Packard (HP) CEO had returned
to Stanford, where she had once enrolled for law,
to give a commencement speech to freshly minted
graduates. In the half-hour talk she gave, Carly
seemed to have little to say beyond her own story.
She used the word ‘I’ 129 times and only
thanked one person by name: her husband. There was
no mention of her mentors in the HP board, the people
who were willing to back her in the Compaq deal
despite opposition from the Packard and Hewlett
families. There was no mention of chairman Dick
Hackborn who had supported her to the hilt on every
controversial decision. Anders recollects that sentence
after sentence began, “I showed up...”,
“I never looked back...”, “I hit
my stride...”
Perfect Enough has often been compared rather unfavourably
with Peter Burrows’ Backfire, another book
that takes a close look at Carly and the HP-Compaq
merger. The critical reviews of the Anders book
go something like this: the author is excessively
sympathetic to his subject. His portrayal of the
company and the events leading up to the HP-Compaq
merger is not very balanced and more or less presents
the HP PR department’s view. And that he was
given unfettered access to Carly and the HP board
only on the condition that his piece would not be
too critical of the CEO. On the other hand, Anders’
critics point out, Burrows dug deeper, in part because
he had no access to Carly, and took a far more objective
view. Also Burrows’ book showed up Carly Fiorina
for what she was — a media-savvy marketer who
knew little about technology but lots about promoting
herself.
Those reviews do grave injustice to this fascinating
book. Sure, Burrows’ book is far more overtly
critical of Carly and is also pretty hard hitting
in its condemnation of the HP-Compaq merger. But
that does not make it the more balanced account.
Indeed, in Backfire you get glimpses of Burrows’
pique at being denied access to the HP top brass
while he was doing his research.
Anders, on the other hand, is careful to present
both sides of the picture. Sure, he gives enough
space to the views of Carly and the HP board. But
he gives equal space to the Walter Hewletts, the
Lew Platts and the rest of the anti-Carly faction.
If you read the book carefully, you will find that
he is far more sympathetic towards them than he
is to Carly. Anders makes his points subtly —
perhaps too subtly. But he captures Carly’s
character perfectly.
One chapter of the book details how shamelessly
Carly positions herself as the person who is reviving
the HP
vision. Steven Simpson, creative director of HP’s
new ad agency works out ‘10 Rules of the Garage’
culled from Dave Packard’s autobiography. These
are the maxims that more or less defined the original
HP Way. Simpson suggests that these rules can become
a powerful internal communication tool to motivate
the employees who are feeling bewildered by the
changes taking place in HP. Carly loves the idea
— only the 10 Rules that came out of Packard’s
book have little to do with the way she intends
to run HP. So she sits down with HP’s head
of human resources to rewrite the rules. Finally,
she gets a video shot which makes it seem that these
are the very rules that Bill and Dave had wanted
to implement! Once the need for internal support
is over, Carly simply dumps the Rules of the Garage
and any mention of Bill and Dave.
At another point, Anders looks at the way Carly
had already plotted the future of Michael Capellas,
her Compaq counterpart, in the run-up to the merger.
Carly had codenamed the project Heloise and Abelard,
based on the French romance. Only one curious young
HP executive found out how the story ended —
Abelard was castrated by Heloise’s family.
Capellas certainly didn’t realise the significance
of the codename until after the merger when he was
left with no role in the company.
Anders also points out that Carly is fairly open
about her belief that one does not need to be an
engineer to run a hardcore technology company. And
that, till date, her real successes have been in
the arena of public relations rather than operations.
He leaves open the question as to how Carly will
steer HP in the future. But anyone reading the book
will not fail to realise what Anders thinks will
happen if Carly stays at the top too long. |
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| BROWSING
|
Kiran Karnik,
President, Nasscom |
 I
am halfway through The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh.
But since my visit to China with the prime minister’s
delegation some time back, the Middle Kingdom is
very much on my mind. That’s why I am reading
THREE CHINESE POETS: Translations of Poems by Wang
Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu at the same time. It’s
an excellent translation by Vikram Seth of poets
from the T’ang Dynasty (618-908 AD), which
is considered the golden period of Chinese poetry.
Not many people know of Seth’s expertise in
Chinese literature. The language is simple without
diluting the structure or elegance of ideas. I prefer
to read foreign reviews but to buy books in India.
On a recent trip to Washington, I bought Farid Zakaria’s
The Future of Freedom for $29; here it’s available
for just Rs 700! |
| |
| Alert |
| STEALING TIME |
By Alec Klein (Simon &
Schuster) |
|
 DID
AOL cook the books to push through its merger
with Time Warner? That’s what this racy book
by a Washington Post reporter
shows as he takes readers through the turbulent
days at the megacorp. AOL was flying high on the
strength of its subscriber revenues and inflated
ad revenues. It’s all about stock madness
as Klein tracks Steve Case and his high-spending
group at AOL.
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| Selection |
| New identities,
new dilemmas |
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| Satish
Deshpande |
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CLASS, says Satish Deshpande, is the concept that
has suffered the sharpest decline in popularity
during the 1990s. This he attributes to the collapse
of socialism. Yet, the current intellectual environment
does not encourage a critical study of why class
in the classical context is no longer appealing.
In his wide-ranging exploration of what shapes the
social and economic landscape of the country, Deshpande,
a sociologist with the Institute of Economic Growth
in Delhi, offers some interesting theories. These
range from the spread of various types of ‘identity
politics’ to the newfound importance of social
movements organised around non-traditional issues
like the environment and peace.
Deshpande brings a critical focus to our contemporary
concerns by using sociology as a critique of what
commonsense tells us about the dilemmas and concerns
that confront us. And what are these concerns? Prime
among these is the question of modernity, which
with its contrasting twin, tradition, is deeply
embedded in the Indian psyche. Indians tend to believe
that there are many ways to be modern, and insist
on a different way, which is to combine modernity
with tradition “to get the best of both worlds”.
More enriching is the discussion of the ‘Nation
as an Imagined Economy’ in which the author
dilates on the profound impact that Hindutva and
globalisation have had in transforming attitudes
and policies. As the ‘patriotic producer’
yields to the ‘cosmopolitan consumer’,
Deshpande says the times are pushing us to consider
new identities driven by supranational ideas and
institutions. How one imagines the nation, notes
the author, is no longer as important as how one
imagines the globe and one’s place in it. An
adjunct to this is the centrality of the middle
class though there is a problem in defining this
segment. The book is not easy to get through given
its academic overhang. But persevere all the same;
the insights can be surprising. |
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| Top
5 sellers |
Jim
Collins is way ahead in the bestseller list although
his book is two years old as are some of the others.
Moneyball
The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
By Michael Lewis
The Intelligent Investor
By Benjamin Graham
Fast Food Nation
By Eric Schlosser
Good to Great
Why Some Companies Make the Leap ...
and Others Don’t
By Jim Collins
The Millionaire Next Door
By Thomas J. Stanley and William
D. Danko
From Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble |
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