I’ve already explained why I think Meg Whitman is a poor choice to lead Hewlett Packard. Here’s why Brian Utley would be so much better.
What HP needs most at this point is breathing room and hiring Brian as interim CEO would do that, allowing the company to make a proper CEO search (including a number of good internal candidates) while leaving the company in good hands. Well past normal retirement age, Brian would have no Whitmanesque ambitions to run the company long-term, though I think he’d really enjoy running HP for awhile.
It’s time for the HP board to give up trying to act in fell swoops. They simply aren’t smart enough.
Brian, if you don’t know him, spent his entire career at IBM, starting as a computer repairman in San Francisco in the punch card era and rising through the ranks to run (and a couple of times shut down) whole divisions of IBM — not today’s IBM, but the IBM we all remember. With a solid engineering background and deep business experience Brian is built precisely in the tradition of Hewlett and Packard where Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd, Leo Apotheker, and Meg Whitman weren’t. He would not only understand HP, he would command instant respect from the troops. We may not have seen that at HP since John Young left 15 years ago.
And let’s be clear about something: Brian Utley is probably smarter and better-grounded than all those other HP CEOs put together. Which I guess makes it impossible he’d ever be hired, right?
Here is Brian’s bio from his current retirement gig as chief strategy officer at wheretolive.com in Eden Prairie, MN:
Brian joins us after a long career in the IT industry. He spent 37 years with IBM and was responsible for the development of many of IBM’s small and intermediate systems including the S/38, AS400 and PC. His influence within IBM impacted virtually all computer-based technologies and resulted in his appointment as Vice President and General Manager of the Personal Computer Division. Since his retirement from IBM, he has assisted a number of start-up companies in the manufacturing and IT industry. He attended Weber State University and San Francisco City College.
I long for a return to the days of guys/gals like this running our companies instead of those so focused on increasing yearly share value that they ultimately collapse the company.
bob
as someone who has been at this at many levels even longer than you i can assure you that “it really doesn’t matter”.
hp, like many of our revered institutions, died long ago but remains unburied. the vast majority of our mighty corporations are headed by an individual who would not rank in the top 100 of their employees qualified to lead them into the future. the sad fact that the CEO, like the government leader, has been naturally selected to be exquisitely capable of getting the job, at the expense of being able to do the job.
all of my young life, hp produced great hardware that it never, unlike ibm, knew how to sell. even in the old days when it had a reputation for inovation, it simply produced better versions of its older products. giving the engineers friday afternoon to innovate was great. rejecting steve wozniak’s apple computer was symptomatic of geriatric management with only a view to the past. would any intervening management have done any better. i think not.
the world changes & some companies are lucky enough to change & survive. hp as a viable competitor to ibm, which never had great products but never forgot how to sell to the unsophisticated establishment…give me a break. hp moving forward in a software centric world (where it has never produced a software product worthy of of a “c”. even less likely.
their problem is endemic. most companies have talented forward looking employees. what they lack is a management that can tell them from the idiots.
O.K. So he knows hardware and stuff like that.
What about 100k services people?
Same problem as Meg Whitman/Leo Apotheker
Maybe there really isn’t a CEO who has experience
managing all of these businesses
in which case, you match execs to divisions and play the home game of SpinOff! the valuable prize is that overall, shareholder value should increase, and duds disappear instead of dragging down the company and poisoning long-range planning by distracting planners with nonsense.
there’s a joke in my industry… even years, responsibility moves down the ladder, odd years, it moves up. the C-level version is this decade, we acquire diversity with mergers… next decade, we slim down. repeat as needed for all to get fat bonuses and golden parachutes in the proper order.
Rakoff zusätzlich die vorläufige Studie zur Laufzeit zu können nachfolgende, angepasst MBT-Schuhe , März NINETEEN durch Strut Ihre fünf. Juristen auf Seiten beschlossen gemeinsam eine Art von Routine mit Ablagerungen sowie Gesundheits-Geschichte urteilen Slip mit den bevorstehenden viele Monate. Auch so kann der Fall noch im Vergleich zu früheren sein, Tryout, irgendeine Art von wiederkehrenden Vorfall um komplizierte, teure Arbeit in der Lage sein Einkommen für Patienten mit Arglist bestimmt erholen. Irgendeine Art von Bundesregierung Konkursrichter zu ermitteln, die früher hatte, mbt sapatu weißen frauen schuhe , der Fall beschäftigt ein alter Texas Say Gouverneur Mario Cuomo, dass Maßnahmen seit Vermittler aus dem Wettbewerb zwischen den jeweiligen Treuhänder wird, zusammen mit Mets Eigentümer Sein Bruder Wilpon in Zusätzlich zu Saul Katz,
Viele geeignete Branchenexperten erklärte das Urteil vielleicht nicht genau gezielt Maßnahmen ergreifen, mbt herren , dass ein Präzedenzfall für andere Szenarien vor erheblichen Banker sowie so genannte Feeder-Cash, die abgeholt bestimmt bis Madoffs Unternehmen. “Zwei Richter Entspannung in der Halle aus sich selbst kann sehr unterschiedlich Regel”, behauptete Neal Levin in Freeborn & Peters LLP in Chicago genau, wer innerhalb Erholung mit Arglist Opfer Eigenschaften erfahren. “Es ist ebenfalls sehr wahrscheinlich definitiv nicht rechtskräftig jetzt.” Mit einer Recherche in Long Island uns den Gerichtssaal in Mittwoch, deine, frauen MBT Chapa schuhe nizza grau , Treuhänder der gesetzliche Vertreter mit Ihrer Richter teilten sie würde eine Software, indem Sie einfach 24 Juli Dokument zu helfen Attraktivität seiner / ihrer Entscheidung in der Lage sein zu acht über ELEVEN entlassen wird aus der Klage von Seiten der Mets Eigentümer wichtig.
Ihr Treuhänder erholt Hauptstadt zu leiden mit Bernard, mbt sandalen , kann Madoff legendären Arglist leicht für 386.000 $ Blick auf die meisten der durch Führungskräfte aus der Los Angeles Mets hockey Unternehmen, die in Madoff-Organisation investiert scheinen, erwähnt eine Art Bundesregierung zu richten. Ouch. VERTISEMENTS. Region Ermitteln Jed Rakoff am Donnerstag verringerte sich der $ 1000000000 Klage gegen die Mets Eigentümer zusammen mit am Samstag geschrieben zusätzliche Kauf auf der Rechtsstreitigkeiten, die oft einen Einfluss auf die Treuhänder alternative sog. Clawback Rechtsfälle können auf der Suche nach mehr als 94000000000 $. Rakoff zusammen, dass “die vielen, wie der Treuhänder kann erholen von, mbt sapatu weißen frauen schuhe früheren, die Angeklagten kann die komplette ihrer Genf Chamonix Transfer über zwei Jahren ausgelegt werden “, um sie eingereicht mit den persönlichen Konkurs Gericht darüber hinaus möglich auf die oft “erscheint als etwa $ 386.000.”
You have the time frame wrong – it’s quarterly, not annually.
Menschen Auswahlen möglicherweise umfassen die Nutzung von Ough. VERTISEMENTS. Bomber Luftfahrtunternehmen, mbt frauen , in Pakistan. Die South Carolina Republikaner erklärt Ihr Hund würde nicht vorschlagen, Mailing Ough. VERTISEMENTS. Hof Soldaten in Pakistan. “Ich würde sicherlich sagen, wenn es um die Verteidigung Us Truppen kommt, die Sie nicht mehr den Wunsch, Ihre Selbstkontrolle,” Graham behauptet. “Das ist einfach nicht die Stiefel-on-the-ground Hochzeit -. Ich bin nicht wirklich reden, die noch findest du eine Menge von Funktionen, die über Drohnen zu finden” Eine perfekte Welt … Afghan ist, Pakistan, frauen mbt schuhe Tunisha blau , plus (U. VERTISEMENTS. zuzüglich NATO) Koalition Hilfsmittel funktionierenden gegenseitigen Einvernehmen gleichermaßen Facetten der Linie, um sichere Häfen zu verweigern, in Afghanistan sowie auf der anderen Seite “mit entwickelt tribal Pakistans Zonen, von denen das Haqqani Gemeinde zusammen mit anderen Aktivisten in der Regel die Funktion betrachtet, behauptet Graham.
Well, given Meg’s penchant to hire consultants, this Brian guy could end up advising her on how to run a company that he has no clue about
From a <1 year acquired employee and in my best Bender voice: "We're boned!"
It is not by accident that Steve Jobs is building the future of Apple on land previously owned by HP. I remember being in the audience listening to the crap coming out from Apple a year before Jobs was asked to return. If America wants to turn itself around, then aren’t we somewhat responsible to hire some execs that mean more than the same old thing? There is no inspiration coming from Meg. HP is big business turning towards a conservative choice out of fear to change. And change in technology should be the norm, not the afterthought. Where is the inspiration, the “think different”, the push towards building things based on new ideas? HP has taken a golden moment for change and once again has settled for lead balloons.
My first thought is that having an IBM guy finally turn HP back into a true engineering company would be the ultimate irony, but I have to admit that it sounds a whole lot better than the current leadership. It really is too bad they can’t find someone from within the company.
Fat & Lazy
The board & EMT should be vetting new candidates all the time, that’s really their job description so the only reason I can think of that they didn’t do it, is because they are simply too fat & lazy!
I find it quite hilarious that they say the reason they are hiring Meg is because she used to buy stuff for eBay back in the day. Either the insight is unfathomable, or pure BS. I guess we will all find out before too long…
TIME FOR APOTHEKAR TO STEP UP WITH AN F-BOMB RANT OF HIS OWN, WHY LET BARTZ HAVE ALL THE FUN? OH RIGHT – THE MILLION$ OF DOLLAR$ RIDING ON THE NON-DISPARAGEMENT CLAUSE.
The Pharmacist is not a bomb-thrower.
not a visionary either, but at HP, they all went to Agilent in the spinoff.
It’s sad but I don’t see where HP’s future is. They seem to be following IBM’s path, but about 10 years too late. In spite of their heritage they are no longer synonymous with producing best of breed hardware, nor have they been able to successfully innovate in the consumer space like Apple. They’re basically “also rans” in most segments they compete in with (I guess) the exception of their laser printers.
To me it looks like they’re on the same path as Yahoo. The only good news for Meg is in taking over HP is that their finances are in better shape than the State of California’s, the last gig she tried to get.
You forgot about HP BladeSystems. HP is leading the blade x86 arena that and can’t make them fast enough ….
Here’s where the heart of the problem is:
“hiring Brian as interim CEO would do that, allowing the company to make a proper CEO search (including a number of good internal candidates)”
Why do they need to do a search in a hurry? Shouldn’t they already maintain a list of suitable internal candidates, nurture & train them into possible future CEOs (as described by Jack Welch in his GE career biography) as any responsible company should?
Oh I forgot, huge (ex)tech companies today are not run by managers who used to be engineers and striving for engineering excellence, they are run by Wall st. analysts and speculators (=shareholders) who just care about the next quarter being better than current one and nothing else (at the expense of destroying the companies in the long term).
The world is run (and has been for decades) by pure financial speculation and nothing else. Well, look where all this speculation has led us…
The whole HP CEO issue (and, sadly, the same in many other companies) is pure politics and not based on competencies of a possible candidate.
Reminds me of my own (small) country (Slovenia, ex Yugoslavia – remember Tito & Non-Aligned Movement, founded 50 years ago in Belgrade?), where most larger companies are still largely government owned and their CEOs are appointed by politicians. And all those companies generate huge losses each and every year, which we as taxpayers have to cover, no questions asked – we do own the companies, right? Except we only see negative return on investment and the CEO puppets get away with large salaries & bonuses and even larger severance packages – regardless how poor they performed.
And the people in US are in no better situation with public debt of ~100% GDP, every working person burdened by about $100k & China buying the debt…
it is said that MBA theory is that you can manage ANYTHING by controlling the people who know something. all you have to know is controlling those folks.
which is why we have so many C level execs who have not one idea what the talking points they were handed before the financial analyst phoner freakin’ mean. that’s OK, it’s all mealyspeak anyway that the wall street guys talk.
last time a CEO with tech experience told Wail Street that he needed this quarter’s dividend money to manufacture and promote the new doubled-speed mainframes, he was gone in weeks when the Street savaged him. look up Ken Olsen of DEC, it was the VAX 8000 series launch. the machines and their follow-ons in the pipeline were fantastic and sold tons. but nothing else got done after green eyeshade types started running the joint to insure dividends got out before anything else.
Excellent suggestion !!!
At first I was going to suggest we start a pool to predict when Meg would be removed from the job. Then I thought about it a bit more. You know there are probably 100’s at HP who read this column. I bet printed copies of Mr. Cringely’s columns can be found on the wall at HP right now. I would also bet HP’s leadership is completely unaware many things these days, including these columns.
Then it struck me. The concept of management by walking around originated in HP. It is a process whereby management gets out of their offices, walk around, discover their workers, see what’s going on, listen and learn. IT STARTED AT HP !!!!
Sadly there comes a time in many companies when they get too big and/or the management gets too self important that they stop listening and learning from the workforce. HP management — wake up, get out of your chairs, get out, meet people, talk to them, listen and learn from them. Do it now. The future of HP could depend on it.
Steve Jobs is available. He only said he could no longer run Apple.
Steve Jobs operating at 3 percent (and descending) is enough to run HP.
Or, when he dies, his ghost could run HP. Or the ghost of Jobs could run the ghost of HP.
It’s wheretolive.com – here’s the mentioned bio page: https://www.wheretolive.com/about/leadership-team/
where-to-live.com is just a parked domain.
Fixed, thanks.
I wonder if Scott McNealy is available.
I am sure Scott would like a second chance and probably learned alot from Sun’s failure.
Scott isn’t up to this job. Don’t reward failure.
Bob, Do you have any insights on what seems like a 2-in-a-box arrangement between Ray Lane and Meg?
The stock got crushed after hp announced killing touchpad, getting out of PCs, and buying Autonomy – none of these can be reversed at this point, I assume…so tell me agai why Meg Whitman is an improvement on Leo?
the deck chairs have been moved, all is well. another drink, sir?
As more data moves to the Cloud, the customer does not care what hardware is used. In fact companies like Facebook and Google don’t even buy off the shelve servers, then have huge engineering teams that specify custom designs and get 3rd party manufactuers to build them.
Therein lies the problem, companies like HP, IBM and Dell cannot meet the demands of these type of customers and loose out. However, in the enterprise they still have a chance
I had hard time convincing the senior execs to put some of the data in the Cloud. They are not yet convinced of the marits of the Cloud yet. All I got permission is to put non-critical data and apps in the Cloud. However, HP is known for its engineering capability and reliablity. If there such a thing as a “HP Datacentre” as opposed to the Cloud, I think they would be more receptive to the idea. They can visualise a credible HP Datacentre, but have no idea how the cloud setup would be.
They are building one. On time and on or under budget, so far. Supposed to be used for onshore private clouds at eastern creek, west of Sydney, Oz.
Looking for customers, but no doubt won’t get any despite the best efforts of the sales staff due to the multiple layers of suits that infest HP.
Choosing a CEO has become purely a political exercise. A group of old people who don’t have a clue try to choose someone who also has no clue and no skills to run their sinking ship. Instead of utilizng and developing talent internally, everything must be outsourced to find “executive level” talent.
Look how far that’s gotten many of our largest corporations. One good example is Best Buy: Brian Dunn (an internal candidate who move up the ranks from working in the retail stores) gets tagged for CEO, and so far sales and earnings are down sharply. If customers have problems with the stores that they won’t solve, you can’t talk to anyone in the executive offices; you can send them email, but you won’t get a reply. It’s as though their customers (the ones who provide the revenue to keep them in their Ivory tower) aren’t important enough to listen to.
Target is pretty much the same way. At shareholder meetings, he doesn’t talk to or take questions from shareholders; that’s beneath him. He seems to have no problem talking to the press when it suits his agenda, but not anyone else. You can email their executives too, but you won’t ever get a reply from them. Also, despite their Guest Relations department forwarding all complaints to the executives, why did Target hire an outside firm and paid them $5 millionn to survey their customers about what sorts of problems they encountered at Target, and how they could do better?
HP is no different, except now you’ve got Meg Whitman as CEO. She tries to prove her bona fides by talking rough, playing rough, and throwing her money around. That’s why her son, Rutherford (Ruth) Harsh was able to escape being expelled from college (so far). Meg’s just as clueless as Apotheker, and I don’t see her or HP succeeding in this affair.
Isn’t Meg’s nickname Bender Over?
perfect MBAism. don’t do anything, sublet it. “oh, look, the consultants gave us another epic fail. we must hire a study team to determine the next step.”
there are a few clever and wondrous folks who take an MBA diversion to open doors higher up, but retain their original skills and are able to function across all levels of a company.
if you just get the hood and drink the Kool-Aid, you are a drone, and when you have worked yourself out of a job, you get pushed out of the beehive.
Hey buddy, this is one of the best posts that I’ve ever seen; you may include some more ideas in the same theme. I’m still waiting for some interesting thoughts from your side in your next post.
I’m retired. I was a CEO in Hardware, Software and Services industries. Quite successfull… (in the average multiplying profits by 10).
The mandatory quality for a CEO is to have a 5-year vision for his company. The second one is the ability to put in place the organization able to share and implement this vision.
Neither Fiorina, nor her three successors, had these two qualities. They mainly destroyed innovation within HP and didn’t build a new vision.
Brian Uthley has developed traditional technical businesses within IBM. I never knew him as a visionary.
Meg Whitman has no experience in hardware and software. She developed a segment of a very specific service industry.
There is now only one vision that can give new growth to HP.
Let’s see if Meg is finding it…
My doubts…
The mandatory quality for a CEO is to have a 5-year vision for his company.
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