HP board members should stop embarrassing themselves.
-
Jodie Fisher accused Mark Hurd of sexual harassment. She settled with Mark and publicly stated that they never had sexual relationship. Maybe something questionable happened, but it would have fallen into a vast gray area of “misunderstanding” and “he said, she said.” HP board investigated the matter and dismissed the case.
Even convicted sexual harassment complaints rarely become public, let alone dismissed ones. Companies of HP’s size deal with hundreds of sexual harassment complaints. Almost all of them will be sealed, regardless of the outcome, to protect the individuals. By publicizing a double-negative non-event, HP board tried Hurd on the court of public opinion: essentially smearing Hurd and leaving him with no recourse.
-
HP board fired Mark Hurd for “business misconduct,” specifically for questionable expenses in the range of $7,500 related to Ms. Fisher. This CEO received over $30 million in compensation every year. He never touched his expense reports (his admin would have taken care of it). He does not care about spending $7,500 dollars on whatever, on his own dime or not. This is like faulting Tom Wolfe for a spelling mistake. There are many ways to oust a CEO, this one sounds stupid.
-
HP then entered this bidding war with Dell on 3Par. During Mark Hurd’s tenure, HP has quietly become a giant in IT space with an impressive acquisition strategy, with Mark Hurd as the architect behind it. Why would the board spend so much money on an ousted CEO’s strategy? Wouldn’t this prove that Hurd had the right strategy, vision, and plan. In that case, why fire him?
-
Next HP sued to keep Hurd out of Oracle. Larry Ellison already has an excellent executive team, particularly Safra Catz as the president. He was willing the disturb the existing structure for Mark: an appreciation for Mark’s skills that HP lacked. The law suit proves that HP thinks Mark matters. Why did they fire him earlier then?
There could be personal conflicts, power struggles, other behind-the-scene confrontations that we would never read about in HP’s boardroom. Public opinions are shaped by whatever revealed to the press and HP board, contrary to Oracle, handled this poorly. The public now think HP board should have never fired Mark Hurd and Larry Ellison is brilliant. No one knows which side is right. At the end, the stock prices of these company is the final judge. By that time, all of these drama would have been forgotten.
Edit on 9/11: New York Times’ Joe Nocera has a much better written piece on the same subject.
