Rating: 
Summary: Disloyal Enough:... Should have been this book's title
Review: One of the most remarkable aspects of Hewlett-Packard has been the
increasing disloyalty of its non-founder CEOs, which is a topic that despite
its obvious enormous importance to his book, Anders does not address.
Carly Fiorina received a pay package at sign-on of over 60 million dollars,
mostly stock grants. Yet, despite this massive payday from HP shareholders
we find thereafter that she joins the Cisco Board of Directors, a clear
conflict of interest. HP has a product line of networking equipment that
directly competes with Cisco. Many of the growth areas of HP's business
depend on advanced networking where there is direct conflict with Cisco.
Also, Cisco is focused in three main areas including storage systems where
Compaq (now HP) is a leader. It is astonishing that she would sign-up and
remain in such a severe conflict of interest situation. CEOs are NOT
supposed to do this. One or both companies gets cheated in such a
situation. Shareholders of both companies have a right to sue, not only
Fiorina, but HP in such a situation.The other major aspect of Fiorina's disloyalty has been her disloyal refusal
to compete aggressively with key competitors, most notably Sun
Microsystems. This company in the past has beat HP badly in the UNIX
server marketplace, but is currently very weak due to competition not from
HP but from Linux. Any loyal HP executive would take this incredible
opportunity to try to run them out of business before they recover. Instead,
Fiorina is going out of her way to help them! For example, her effort to
ship Java on HP PCs (WSJ 6-12-03). Anders should have noted this let's-
help-a-key-competitor (Sun) aspect of Fiorina which was evident in her
Bluestone acquisition for 400 million (a total waste) which occurred before
the merger, with plenty of time to be included in Anders' book. While these disloyal actions have hurt HP severely, note that they are
strongly beneficial to Fiorina personally. One can only assume that Job One
with Carly is to remain on very good terms with the Cisco and Sun
Microsystems Boards, both of which are likely to have a CEO opening in
the next couple years. This situation should have been given central
position in Anders' book, not ignored completely.
Rating:
Summary: HP Marketing under Fiorina has been very poor
Review: One of this book's many themes is the assertion that Carly Fiorina is a marketing expert and this will greatly help Hewlett-Packard, a firm that has traditionally used a low-key marketing approach. In examining her performance to date, I see nothing to indicate that she has any true marketing expertise, in contrast to Anders' claims. Her latest marketing campaign reportedly cost 400 million dollars but appears to be a complete waste of money. True, ad agencies that produce this stuff do screw-up, but when they do the CEO needs to either send them back to the drawing board or fire them and hire someone that can do the job required. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy these poor ads only confirms vast foolishness is not only possible, but probable under Fiorina. We should contrast Fiorina's poor marketing performance at HP with that of Michael Dell who has brilliantly promoted the sales of Dell computers through the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" and the Dell intern ads. This required leadership to inspire their ad agency to produce good work and to reject work that was sub-par. Fiorina has not demonstrated she can do either of these marketing leadership functions. And she is competing against someone that has demonstrated that he can. Anders should not have misled us with regard to Fiorina's marketing abilities. He should have paid more attention to the negative aspects of her training at Lucent. One of her bosses there invested about 40 million dollars of company funds in building a golf resort restricted to top management. This was his idea of a proper marketing expense. Obviously, Fiorina has been trained in the most self-indulgent, poor-return-on-the-dollar marketing techniques being used today. The book buying public deserves better than Anders' off-base account, and HP people deserve better leadership than Fiorina.
Rating: 
Summary: The Party Line
Review: The most interesting aspect of George Anders' "Perfect Enough" is the book's very existence: it is tangible evidence of the power of the HP PR machine under Carly Fiorina, and the transformation of HP from heads-down engineering excellence to a Carly-centric media machine. In other words, this is the book that HP and the HP board want the public to read, facing the release of a competing and more critical book ("Backfire" by Peter Burrows). In "Perfect Enough", Fiorina is positioned favorably - a lone crusader in a sexist culture of engineers who have lost the "shining soul" that made the company and its founders legend. She is depicted as the grim and embattled hero, fighting and winning the good fight against impossible obstacles both internal and external. It would be wrong to accuse Fiorina of wrecking the celebrated "HP Way", already in steep decline long before her tenure. But to portray her as the staunch defender of a cause she seems not to understand, and trivializes through slogans and catch-phases, is a far more serious offense which Anders chooses to overlook. Much has been made of the unfettered access the author was granted to Carly and the board, resulting in a detailed account of the HP recollection of events behind closed doors. But unless you are really interested in the menus of the lunches served to the board in critical meetings, I'd recommend Burrows' book for an "unsanctioned", but far more balanced, portrait of the events leading to HP's acquisition of Compaq.
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.
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: 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: The book is perfect enough...
Review: This book gives comprehensive, balanced treatment to the storied founding and meteoric growth of Hewlett-Packard and its leaders. For those of us who have never worked at HP, we get a clear sense for what it was like when Bill and Dave ran the place. We also come to understand the challenges HP faced as it grew, utlimately becoming, to some degree, a victim of its own success. There is drama all along the way. It is fascinating to watch the process of the board selecting Carly Fiorina as CEO. There is more drama as one watches her predecessor, Lewis Platt, struggle while watching HP change from "old" to "new." Some of the book's most interesting perspective relates to the personalities involved in managing and governing HP, from family members running foundations controlling large blocks of HP stock, to board members running large businesses in their own right, to reluctant heroes such as Dick Hackborn, who served as a mentor to Carly Fiorina and became HP's chairman for a time. While the background on the family foundations is excessive, we come to know intimately the cast of characters in the HP-Compaq drama. Whether you supported the HP-Compaq merger or not, it is clear that everyone involved was passionate about his or her cause. The greatest insights the book offers relate to leadership -- Carly Fiorina's relentless persistence in the face of brutal adversity; the power of passionate belief in one's mission; the unswerving support of all but one HP board member of the HP-Compaq deal; and the realization that organizational change can indeed be wrenching. Overall, a well-documented, highly entertaining read.
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.
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.
Rating:
Summary: Great story about the HP/Compaq merger
Review: This is a great read. Anders is a wonderful author who puts you in the middle of the action. He provides deep character development so you really feel you understand the behavior of all the major players in the HP/Compaq story. Buy it!
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