Redemption bid but no humility

There is a peculiarly American genre in book publishing that is all about redemption. To be more precise, it is about optimism, success, hubris, purgatory, humility, renewed self-awareness and then redemption. To be really effective, the author must undertake a dose of soul searching on TV talk shows.

Carly Fiorina, the fallen chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co., has now trodden this familiar path, although she seems to have rushed past some of the customary waypoints.

If executed properly, the very public ritual serves an important social purpose. It is a way for public figures to be made new again.

On a personal level, it also supplies an opportunity, amid the mea culpas, to indulge in self-justification and vengeance. If Fiorina overplays the opportunity, it is entirely understandable.

Even today, nearly two years after she was fired by HP’s board, Fiorina is a polarizing figure.

The most prominent woman in U.S. business for the 5 1/2 years she ran HP, she might have seemed a natural role model for women everywhere.

Her own early role models, we learn from this memoir, included the character Cinnamon in the “Mission Impossible” TV series, and the title character in the Sophocles play “Antigone.”

Yet Fiorina was -- as she attests in this book -- criticized as vindictive, regal and “a bitch.” The fact that HP’s stock jumped when she left confirmed the general sense that she had failed.

Some of Fiorina’s self-justification certainly rings true.

While at HP she did her best to fend off questions related to her gender, arguing that this would be a distraction from the real issues she and the struggling company faced.

Yet it was an issue she could not escape. Before announcing the acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. -- the defining event of her time at HP -- she prepared for all the questions the media might throw at her except the issue she ended up being asked most often: What was it like to break through the glass ceiling?

In its best passages, “Tough Choices: A Memoir” makes up for her earlier silence about what it takes to succeed as a woman in business (or, at least, what it took in the 1970s and 1980s).

Early episodes in her career follow a similar pattern: fear and uncertainty in the face of intimidation (or outright sexual predation) by men in more powerful positions; a surge of anger enabling her to overcome adversity; tears afterward.

As she rises through the hierarchy, first at AT&T; Corp. and then at Lucent Technologies Inc., the tears become less frequent and the resolve firmer.

Part of the price of success was a growing loneliness and, to judge by the evaporation of earlier camaraderie, a sense of isolation.

Also, as she acknowledges, her anger at HP’s directors after discovering that one of them had leaked board discussions to the media may have lost her vital support when she needed it most.

Fiorina rightly criticizes members of the media who were eager to thrust celebrity status on her because of her gender. One of her biggest failures at HP, however, was the inability to build a strong management team that could both lead an effective turnaround and share the limelight.

Then there was the HP board. After the last two months, it is hard to argue with her conclusion that this was as dysfunctional a group as you could meet in the upper echelons of a U.S. corporation.

Deft character assassinations, from the process-driven and largely ineffectual Patricia C. Dunn to the mercurial Thomas J. Perkins, certainly ring true now.

For all this, it is difficult to argue with the board’s ultimate judgment of Fiorina. Although HP’s performance began to improve during her watch, the gains were slow in coming and the company’s share price remained in the basement.

This book largely glosses over two of the biggest indictments against her: the poor execution that brought a succession of earnings disappointments and an inability to lay out a coherent vision for HP that justified its continuation as the tech industry’s most diverse conglomerate.

Ultimately, Fiorina’s failure was one of leadership. She could not convince the board, or her own staff, that she had what it took to complete HP’s turnaround.

Under the circumstances, this may have been a near impossible job: an outsider -- a woman and a non-engineer to boot -- had been brought in to try to mend one of Silicon Valley’s proudest and most hidebound engineering-led companies.

Yet, as Fiorina acknowledges, this is the big league and there is no room for failure.

“Tough Choices” does not, in the end, complete the arc of reassessment and self-discovery that the genre demands.

Still bent on self-justification and revenge, the book lacks a proper dose of self-awareness and humility. Yet it still serves as a reminder of the undeniable courage and talents of one of the most notable business leaders -- male or female -- of recent years.

If there really are second acts in American life, then Carly Fiorina, at 52, still has time for hers.

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Richard Waters is the San Francisco-based West Coast editor for the Financial Times, in which this review first appeared.

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Still polarizing

* Tough Choices: A Memoir

* By Carly Fiorina

* Portfolio, $24.95, 256 pages

Source: Publisher