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Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina received a mostly friendly reception in Silicon Valley Thursday as she made some of her first local appearances promoting her book, "Tough Choices," but she also found herself defending her tenure at HP.
At a Churchill Club breakfast, moderator and Forbes writer Quentin Hardy asked her about HP missing nine quarterly earnings targets under her tenure.
"HP missed nine quarters before I came to HP," Fiorina corrected. During her time as CEO of the Palo Alto computer and printer giant, HP missed five quarters, according to a Mercury News count. "A quarterly miss is not a good thing. However, a transformation of a big company is not a 90-day process."
Although a commentary in the New York Times last Saturday said Fiorina has taken a "revisionist" view of her accomplishments, the crowds who came to see Fiorina wanted to hear about her book and her rise from a law-school dropout to eventually becoming the head of Silicon Valley's largest company. They found her apparent honesty and humor surprising. For some, she was inspirational.
"They appreciated the candor," said Nora Denzel, a former HP executive who headed the storage business under Fiorina.
After the event, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, a long line formed with people eager to have their book signed and to chat with the author. Her book is already No. 6 on the bestseller list at Kepler's, the Menlo Park bookstore where she will be speaking and signing books Friday evening. Promise Phelon, CEO of the Phelon Group, a consulting firm in Sunnyvale, and her friend Nilofer Merchant, CEO of Rubicon Consulting, were buying multiple books for clients.
"It's a pretty gripping read," said Mike Pegler, a director of PRTM, a consulting firm in Mountain View. "In the first two pages, she talks about how she was fired. It sucks you in from there."
Fiorina was ousted from HP in February 2005 by the board. Accounts differ about the reasons she was fired, but in part, Fiorina believes that some board members did not want to take part in a thorough review of board members after a boardroom leak. She suggested such a review after a leak to the Wall Street Journal resulted in a January 2005 story describing a confidential board meeting in great detail. She asked outside counsel Larry Sonsini to interview all the board members, but said her investigation involved "no spying, no pretexting."
Her account of a dysfunctional board mirrors the ensuing investigation into boardroom leaks after her departure. That investigation became a huge scandal after personal phone records of board members and journalists were obtained under false pretenses by investigators, and it was disclosed to the press.
She also said the board was under pressure because of negative press and HP's moribund stock price. A few weeks before her firing, Fortune wrote a cover story about HP's merger with Compaq titled "Why Carly's Big Bet is Failing."
"I'm sure there were many people in the valley who thought I deserved to be fired," she said.
Former board member and venture capitalist Tom Perkins disagreed with her account of why she was fired. In his recent review of Fiorina's book in Business Week, Perkins wrote, "Overall, in my view, she fails to understand the board's frustration over HP's deteriorating performance and her style of management," Perkins wrote. "Probably not enough time has elapsed for the book to be called Lessons rather than Choices."
But Fiorina remains an engaging speaker and her flair for captivating an audience is undiminished. At lunchtime Thursday, Fiorina spoke to a packed auditorium of students at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where she told them anecdotes from her book, including the now oft-told tale of her customer meeting in a strip club while at AT&T.
"She has been out of the limelight for awhile," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group in San Jose. "She is very good in front of an audience and when that skill comes out the audience is impressed."
Some of the Stanford students felt a connection with Fiorina, who is an alumnus of the university. Appealing to the crowd, she said her jacket was "Stanford red."
Yuko Hamasaki, a 30-year-old MBA student who works in Japan, said she could really relate to Fiorina's tales of being a novelty as a woman in business, especially in Asia. "Japan is about 15 years behind the times," Hamasaki said. "I work for IBM so I know what she is talking about."
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