Amidst the dozens of articles on Carly Fiorina's firing by HP's board, Rich Karlgaard's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal caught my attention. Karlgaard, publishes of Forbes, lists Fiorina's "Seven Deadly Sins," the strategic and tactical mistakes that eventually got her canned.
I gamely nodded along with Nos. 2 through 7 (ranging from "Failing to see the cheap revolution" to "Lack of focus"), but deadly sin No. 1 really struck me: "Acting like a rock star."
Karlgaard's point is that, "In the U.S., only entrepreneurs get to act as rock stars. Hired guns do not...Carly was excoriated for a boneheaded move [the Compaq acquisition]. Founder-CEOs* are allowed to get away with far worse."
What Karlgaard is describing is a classic case of brand misalignment. HP had been a solid, stolid, even stodgy brand, and Fiorina was determined to remake the company's image as a part of her master plan. Perhaps she felt that she should personify that new image--in any event, she could and did personify that image, and the business media lapped it up. All well and good, but that image ultimately became Fiorina's personal brand, not HP's.
I'll always think of Fiorina as an active, dynamic leader--despite the fact that she basically failed at HP. And I'll always think of HP as a plodding, steady company--no matter how many deals they cut with Apple.
I know this sounds like icky marketing-speak, but all of us have what are essentially personal brands: how we're perceived, the image we project, the values we represent. And every organization we're associated with has a brand of its own as well. In this context, Fiorina's experience raises worthwhile questions for all of us about the (in)consistencies that exist between ourselves and the organizations in our own lives. (More on this later.)
* Interestingly, the bad boy founder-CEOs cited by Karlsgaard--Gates, Buffett, Dell, Ellison, Jobs, Schultz, Fred Smith and Howard Hughes--are all boys, and I think it's fair to say that Fiorina's gender subjected her to stricter scrutiny in this regard. But her ultimate problem was HP's share price, not sexism, and if the Compaq deal had gone according to Fiorina's plan, she could have been Michael Eisner in Chanel, and the board would be patting her on the back today.