March 7, 2005
(Computerworld)
Like many people who remember Hewlett-Packard in its glory days, I offered a quiet cheer when the company's board of directors showed Carly Fiorina the door early last month. It was an overdue recognition that her tenure as CEO, while not entirely a disaster, was essentially a failure.
Her departure brought to mind a scenario that was proposed during the long battle over whether to buy Compaq, which pitted Fiorina against the son of one of the founders. I can't remember where I heard (or possibly read) the suggestion, but it went along the following lines:
1. HP goes ahead and buys Compaq.
2. HP then sells its printer business to Agilent Technologies Inc. A spin-off from the old HP, Agilent focuses on the test and measurement businesses that once were core to HP's operations.
3. HP keeps the computer business and renames itself Compaq.
4. Agilent, which has now reassembled the businesses that made up the heart and soul of the old HP, renames itself Hewlett-Packard.
The scenario made sense in a wickedly ironic sort of way, though it was obviously not in the cards at the time. It makes even more sense now, because HP is plainly flailing around for a strategy.
I can even suggest a CEO for the newly revived Compaq: its former CEO Michael Capellas. He's been running telecommunications firm MCI, which is selling itself to one of the big regional phone monopolies. So he'll be looking for something to do. No doubt he's also a candidate for the top HP job. But whether anyone can manage the lumbering giant is an open question.
In fact, the future of the company began fading years ago, when the founders and their immediate successors left the scene. HP began losing its way when it began shedding the HP Way.
The HP Way has been ridiculed in recent years, but it meant something important. It came from the commitment of the founders, who knew that the core of their company was a purpose, something more holistic than Wall Street's simple and craven hungers. They believed, more than most tycoons, that a company exists not just for its shareholders, but also for its employees and the communities in which the company does business. There was a humanistic bent to their approach.
HP people were part of a corporate culture that frequently made them proud. It also made them loyal. Silicon Valley communities, and other places where the company had facilities, felt the benefits.
Under Fiorina, the HP Way was viewed as a vestige of a more naive time, an outmoded and even counterproductive way of doing business. And as the company shed its more humane ways, its employees and communities felt that process too.
HP didn't dump everything of value. And the company still has thousands of people who try every day to do their best, for their colleagues and for their neighbors. But the culture that meant so much for so long has faded. That has been a great loss.
One school of modern thought holds that we live in a time when humanistic concerns are irrelevant to corporate life or are even a detriment to success. The HP that embraced more positive values has changed. But that HP is also missed.
Dan Gillmor, a writer based in Silicon Valley, is the author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (O'Reilly Media Inc., 2004). Contact him at grassroots@gillmor.com.