At the closed HP all hands meeting last week Meg Whitman and Ray Lane addressed the internal bay area employees.
The goal of the meeting was to publicly stand up in front of the team and lay out Meg Whitman’s plan. One surprise in the meeting was the revelation on the next CEO.
According to my sources inside the meeting, Ray Lane announced that HP’s next CEO will be hired from within.
In addition to that Meg Whitman got great reviews from the employees. In her talk she laid out her top 3 priorities.
Meg Whitman’s Top 3 Priorities
- Evaluate the PSG spin off within the next 90 days around the criteria that best generates the most corporate and shareholder value.
- Make the quarter. Meg was focused on communicating that the performance has to be there for HP for them to do anything else strategy.
- Integrate Autonomy.
Meg said.
“No matter what Silicon Valley power blogger John Furrier says about how bad the Autonomy deal is …we have to do the Autonomy deal by UK law so we will make it work for our strategy.”
Ok she didn’t say that part about me, but that was her main point. What she did say was something along the lines of .. Autonomy is a done deal and cannnot be unwinded so HP will integrate it the best they can into operations. It will be a strategic and operational fit.
Role of CEO Selection – Succession Plan Failure
The question on how poorly the CEO selection and succession process played out was top of mind of the audience. Mainly around the current succession plan and if Meg Whitman was an interim or permanent CEO.
Ray stood by Meg as permanent CEO, but then said that she won’t be around forever. Ray Lane said that dropped the big bombshell …He said
“The next CEO will be hired from within HP.”
From that Ray and Meg went on to say that the overall priority regarding the employees was clear – develop talent internally. Going forward HP will put low priority or hold on search firms and outside hiring. Expect HP to bulk up on talent management. They acknowledged that HP has done a poor job of promoting from within. That inability to hire from within the ranks caused the majority of the companies problems.
How long will Meg last? We’ll see, but the message is clear on HP’s next CEO – it will come from inside the company.
Bottom line: This is the Meg and Ray show and I have no problem with that.
COMMENTARY: John Furrier, Founder, CEO, and Executive Editor, SiliconANGLE Network is entirely too easy when it comes to the appontment of Meg Whitman as HP's new CEO and Ray Lane's elevation to Executive Chairman. As I pointed out in my blog post September 23, 2011, The decision to hire a new CEO was too rushed and Meg Whitman is not the right person for the job. The latter is the general opinion of many Silicon Valley analysts. Meg Whitman has shown she can lead an internet company like eBay, but she lacks adequate experience to run a PC hardware and software bompany.
The fact that Meg Whitman was appointed to HP's board of directors and voted for the Autonomy deal and agreed with Leo Apotheker's strategy to spinoff the PC hardware division, but now needs three months to fully evaluate an HP spinoff tells me she is either not sure what to do, or was goaded into agreeing to go along with the spinoff by either Ray Lane or some of the other board members. Why would you vote for something, then say, "I need more time to evaluate it." That logic simply does not make sense to me.
If the HP board of directors had a change of heart after they went along with Leo Apotheker's stategy to acquire Autonomy and spinoff the PC divison, they should take part of the blame for okaying it in the first place. If you ask me, the decision to fire Leo was based strictly because HP shareholders were pissed that the company lost 20% of their market value in a single day. Shit happens, but they went along with Leo's decision, and they can't just do a 180 that hung Leo out-to-dry. Unfortunately, this is what happens in corporate America all of the time. If there was a mistake, it was Leo making a public statement that HP would spinoff the PC business. He should've just kept quiet, and if the board really wanted to go through with the spinoff, they should've backed Leo's decision.
In conclusion, I have a feeling that the HP board of directors is one of those boards that "waffles", they have no balls, will change their mind at the drop of a hat, and many of them don't have PC hardware experience. They may have high-tech and internet experience, but this counts for naught when it comes to pure play PC hardware, which is pretty much a commodity business with paper thin margins.
What really irks me is Ray Lane's comment that the next CEO will come within HP's ranks. Why not conduct a search of HP insiders ready to run the company after firing Leo Apotheker. HP is a huge company. Surely there is somebody qualified to run the company, someone who has hardward and software experience and understands the HP culture.
Courtesy of an article dated September 27, 2011 appearing in SiliconAngle
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