Rating: 
Summary: Packed With Knowledge!
Review: Carly Fiorina is a controversial character who engineered one of the most contentious, notorious mergers in business history. Author George Anders has written a fast-paced, gripping to read, account of Ms. Fiorina's career, Hewlett-Packard's history and the controversial events surrounding the hard-fought merger. His account is quite friendly to Ms. Fiorina, and rarely criticizes her. Anders tilts noticeably against her antagonists, especially the curious Walter B. Hewlett, son of the company's co-founder and philanthropist. He had significant influence over the family foundation, but its fortunes depended on the fate of the company and HP stock. We find this narrative indispensable to understanding the history of the merger. It reveals high-level boardroom politics and maneuvering, and brings alive the breathtaking pace and fiery personalities involved. (And, if you want a contrasting view, a previous book, Backfire, promoted Walter B. Hewlett's side of the controversy.)
Rating: 
Summary: So much fluff - like the great woman herself
Review: Carly Fiorina took over HP in July 1999. Some interesting numbers since that time:
Lexmark shares up 40%
Canon shares up 16%
Dell shares up 3%
IBM shares down 23%
HP shares down 60%
(Look it up on money.msn.com)
Ms. Fiorina also entered saying that HP should dump the printing business in order to concentrate on e-commerce. 3 years later, that business was being described as HP's crown jewels. She also claimed that what HP needed was more accountibility (see numbers above). And we're supposed to be interested by her views on business?
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Summary: Another great story owhy capitalism and democracy works best
Review: George Anders has done a great job in narrating the story of the reinvention of HP. He covers three important areas - 1) the legacy of the founding fathers and the HP corporation, 2) how capitalism, democracy and legislative systems work together in the best interest to future growth, not only for a corporation but also for the economy as a whole, 3) an illustration of how the new generation of leaders like Carly Fiorina are making waves for the new economy.
This is a good read for anyone who's interested in leadership, new economy and the corporate affairs.
Rating: 
Summary: Seems a fair enough assessment of the situation
Review: I was very disappointed in Anders' book. He should have focused on those aspects of Fiorina's character that have led to further HP degeneration. Providing such predictive value is a key contribution of a good book, and the author has failed us enormously in this area. Two examples of this foreseeable degeneration have occurred in the last couple weeks:First, on page one of the San Jose Mercury-News of 4-9-03, Fiorina found it necessary to pay tribute to a local Marxist-feminist that passed away. She has been supporting this woman's commie-inspired institute with HP money/resources. These actions are, at best, idiotic. These problems could have been predicted by Anders if he had analyzed her far-left "e-inclusion" speeches. Instead, he ignored her radicalism. Second, Fiorina has demeaned US combat troops in the field by routinely flying the US flag on the wrong HP flagpole. This happens at many sites -- a good example are the flags at 10435 North Tantau, Cupertino. Because these flagpoles are oriented orthogonal to the street, the US flag belongs on the center flagpole. Fiorina disrespectfully flies it on the inside pole. That Fiorina has not bothered to instill in her people the need to get this right at a time when US troops are dying in combat is a disgrace. Even the Germans, who several years ago occupied a site two blocks north, managed to fly the US flag on the proper pole. If Anders had done his job properly in this book, he could have predicted problems of this sort would arise. This could have raised the visibility of these issues to the point where she would have been dismissed before causing these problems. Instead, both HP and the nation are still suffering from her bad management.
Rating: 
Summary: Book should have analyzed Fiorina speeches for insight
Review: One of my concerns about this book is its frequent depiction of Carly Fiorina as not only an excellent communicator, but a charismatic one as well. This is nonsense. She may be charming at times, but this is a charm without substance, and her public communications are often both trite and insulting to important customers, potential customers or potential employees. If author Anders' had analyzed some of her speeches in depth, I think he would have come to the same conclusion. This is not just some historical problem, she just delivered (6-19-04) yet another of these seriously unhinged addresses at UCLA for the Commencement of the Engineering College there. The text of this speech is available (for now at least) on HP's web site alongside her executive biography.
UCLA has one of the best engineering schools in the country and they have a large number of serious students of engineering. Yet Carly decides to start out her address with a joke about Donald Trump's hair and soon starts rambling at length and incoherently about her impressions of reality television. She continues on with references to disco, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, William Hung and yet another reference to Donald Trump's hair.
This Carly performance is an extreme embarrassment to HP and its investors. After hearing this speech, which implied they were a bunch of airheads, why would any UCLA student or faculty member want to come to HP? Why would they want to buy an HP computer when they could buy a Dell or an IBM? Why would Donald Trump want to buy HP equipment for his firms or give HP valuable free advertising by making a complimentary reference to HP equipment?
This would have been a much better book if George Anders had read and analyzed her speeches. While most are doubtless written by others, she approves all of them, and can certainly reject inappropriate material rather than broadcast it to the world. If there is anyone left that still thinks Carly Fiorina is effective as a Celebrity Spokesperson sort of CEO, they should read her UCLA address.
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Summary: Pitfalls of CEOs with political ambitions needs exploring
Review: One of the interesting aspects of Perfect Enough... is that Anders was one of the first in this book to note Carly Fiorina's political interests and emerging ambitions. It is unfortunate that the potential implications of these ambitions were not explored further in his book. We will note some the negative impacts of these ambitions to show their importance to his book:
First, large numbers of HP employees believe she is not committed to her job, and that she sees being a CEO as just a useful stepping stone to her future political career. This explains why she is far more interested in meeting with political leaders (who are not in a position to buy HP equipment) than with business leaders (who are in a position to buy HP equipment). Nothing destroys the morale of the rank-and-file more than an uncommitted, not-interested-in-the-business CEO.
Second, as she is clearly positioning herself as a Blue state politician, she obviously creates a clear conflict-of-interest, since HP needs to sell equipment to the entire country. This situation is actually even worse, since most HP customers in Blue states are business leaders with Red State values. The result is Carly's left-wing political ambitions risk alienating the vast majority of HP's customers.
Third, a CEO with political ambitions could be expected to order the hiring of what are essentially HP-subsidized political operatives (who will owe her something later), as opposed to needed skilled computing professionals. Anyone that reads the HP job listings for the Bay Area will notice the ratio of requisitions for bureaucrats with fuzzy duties as opposed to engineers with concrete responsibilities is a high one, which raises fears that this may be occurring.
Fourth, Carly's additional expressions of interest in political office to Anders and others since the book was published was particularly inappropriate in view of HP history. Some people believe a previous HP CEO tried to pressure Dave Packard into not firing him for poor performance by giving people the impression he might become the next Secretary of Commerce, who would then be in a position to punish HP in various ways. Dave Packard, of course, would not be bullied, and this CEO retired and did not become Secretary of Commerce. HP's current Board of Directors should follow Dave Packard's example, and not let another failing CEO named Carly bully them.
Anders book would have been a much better one with an exploration of these negative implications of a CEO expressing interest in political office as Carly Fiorina has done.
Rating: 
Summary: Sympathetic but insightful
Review: There are two sides to every merger and in the case of Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer, the competing sides weren't just the companies. They include the historians documenting it. For Perfect Enough, George Anders gained access to HP CEO Carly Fiorina and her fellow board members and executives. It provides a full picture of the genesis of the computing deal. Explaining the frustration board members felt at the company's inability to keep up with competitors benefiting from the Internet boom such as Dell Computer Corp. or release a killer new product since the laser printer in the early 1980s, Anders stresses that the board members - and not just Fiorina- were seeking a radical makeover for HP. Peter Burrows' competing book about the merger, Backfire, paints Carly Fiorina as a brilliant marketer and communicator who stumbled into HP after one of the worst executive search jobs of all time by Christian Timbers. Her first two years was good idea after good idea followed by poor execution after poorer execution. The Business Week journalist implies the Compaq merger was primarily a way to deflect attention away from her inability to turn the company around after her first two years there. Anders' more sympathetic account is fascinating at times such as its description of the complex relationship between Fiorina and David Packard's daughter Susan Packard-Orr. But, Burrows' book - unencumbered by any sense of loyalty to Fiorina, who snubbed the author - digs deeper into Fiorina's past by interviewing her ex-husband and childhood friends, thereby providing a much fuller picture of the executive, if not the entire organization. Taken together, the two books complement each other nicely. It remains to be seen if the same can be said for the merger.
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Summary: An HP CEO not focused on HP business
Review: This book falls into an interesting category, those books that are irresponsible by omission. George Anders' primary irresponsibility was his failure to point out that Carly Fiorina has never been focused on solving key HP business problems. This was clear in the Compaq merger debate this book reviews where she failed to answer the issues that Walter Hewlett and other critics raised in a substantive way. It is even more true today -- it is clear from her recent activities that Carly Fiorina has essentially given up on HP and HP business problems and instead is focusing completely on personal interests. In reviewing the topics of her last 10 business speeches, only one (her Oracleworld keynote) promotes HP business interests. The other 90% focus on a variety of personal interests - her desire to be viewed as a great humanitarian, gender celebrations, etc. At the very minimum, HP shareholders, who have suffered a loss of 49% in the value of their shares during the Fiorina administration, deserve to have her focus her efforts on HP business. Surely this huge investment of her time in marketing herself as a great humanitarian etc can wait until she leaves HP. It only demeans HP to have a CEO (who HP has paid over 100 million dollars in cash, stocks and options) cost its shareholders 49% plus the time value of money of their investment and add insult to injury by public demonstrating to all her lack of interest in her job. Anders' book could have been a valuable contribution if it had simply emphasized Fiorina's lack of interest in the true duties of her job.
Rating:
Summary: An HP CEO not focused on HP business
Review: This book falls into an interesting category, those books that are irresponsible by omission. George Anders' primary irresponsibility was his failure to point out that Carly Fiorina has never been focused on solving key HP business problems. This was clear in the Compaq merger debate this book reviews where she failed to answer the issues that Walter Hewlett and other critics raised in a substantive way. It is even more true today -- it is clear from her recent activities that Carly Fiorina has essentially given up on HP and HP business problems and instead is focusing completely on personal interests. In reviewing the topics of her last 10 business speeches, only one (her Oracleworld keynote) promotes HP business interests. The other 90% focus on a variety of personal interests - her desire to be viewed as a great humanitarian, gender celebrations, etc. At the very minimum, HP shareholders, who have suffered a loss of 49% in the value of their shares during the Fiorina administration, deserve to have her focus her efforts on HP business. Surely this huge investment of her time in marketing herself as a great humanitarian etc can wait until she leaves HP. It only demeans HP to have a CEO (who HP has paid over 100 million dollars in cash, stocks and options) cost its shareholders 49% plus the time value of money of their investment and add insult to injury by public demonstrating to all her lack of interest in her job. Anders' book could have been a valuable contribution if it had simply emphasized Fiorina's lack of interest in the true duties of her job.
Rating:
Summary: Book overlooked Fiorina's poor performance
Review: This book, unfortunately, did not have real coverage in the two areas that I regard as most important: quality of sales and marketing execution and wisdom of business investment decisions. When any CEO steps into a position like the one Fiorina did, what investors most want is the highest quality marketing and sales of existing products and the best business judgement available concerning future investments. Anders' famously tells us what the HP Board had for lunch one day but failed to provide insight into these two key areas. There were major failures in both areas that Anders could have warned us about. For example, HP has fallen from number 3 when Carly took over to number 6 in the digital camera market. It was critical to move from number 3 to at least number 2 in this market in order to have a good business here and instead we find she fell to a pathetic and unsustainable number 6. Her VP responsible for this disaster still has his job, apparently with an office near a beach in San Diego. Before Carly, when this general area was a wildly successful one for HP, a previous HP VP lived close to the key HP imaging site in Boise, Idaho. Anders could have warned us this was failing and why. I was also very disappointed that Anders did not warn us about the poor new business investment decisions being made Fiorina aside from Compaq. Heavy investments in "digital entertainment" may provide Carly with an excuse for her hobnobing with Hollywood and music industry people but is unlikely to yield much in the way of profit. About the time he retired Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) mentioned that he had never met Carly. I doubt she has much time for people like Welch that were in the position to buy billions of dollars of HP products because she spends so much time with people that are unlikely to buy anything including Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Sheryl Crow, Oprah Winfrey, Ben Affleck, the Sopranos etc. There does not appear to be a real business agenda here -- it seems social in nature. This obvious perspective should have been noted in Anders' book. Surely the fact that Carly Fiorina has taken her eye off the ball at HP, and this has been going on for many years, deserves to be at least duly noted.
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