Well it’s official, not only has Meg Whitman been hired by the HP board to replace ousted Léo Apotheker ; who has been on the job for less than a year and will apparently walk away from the job with $10 million, but the HP board continues to show its own incompetence.
The simple fact is that any problems with the once venerable Hewlett-Packard isn’t so much who the CEO is but the fact that the board of directors for the company have been totally negligent in their care and running of the company. Thsi is something that started way back with the whole Fiorina mess that was exasperated by Hurd and his decimation of the company in order to make Wall Street happy.
So what do they do to try and fix the mess – they hire a SAP executive by the name of Léo Apotheker, who had left SAP under a cloud, a cloud that seems to have followed him to HP where he took the mess created by Mark Hurd and made it an even bigger mess to the point that the value of the company went even further in the toilet.
Now this very same board goes and gives him the boot and installs ex-eBay CEO; and failed California candidate for governor, Meg Whitman in his place. Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire.
As with all previous CEO moves of late the HP board caused heads to shake in bewilderment at this move, a move that puts the woman who basically had to step down from a company that had become outdated and stagnant in one of the most important roles in a company that is in desperate need of leadership and vision.
What strikes me as strange is that one would think that if you are one of the world’s largest enterprise and hardware companies wouldn’t you .. like .. hire someone who understands that part of the business?
Instead HP hires someone who’s main claim to fame is running the world’s largest electronic auction houses. I mean, really where does any of her core competencies match up with the needs of HP?
