Timing is everything. In book publishing, especially. I didn't watch it. I was watching baseball. At least those multi-millionaires are earning their multiple millions by entertaining me. Besides, I'd just had dinner and didn't want to risk severe indigestion seeing and hearing Carly Fiorina and Patty Dunn whine and moan about their respective cruel fates (read: just desserts) they bravely endure today.
The Sixty Minutes site lays it all out there (Fiorina Comments On Public Firing). The best part is the public commentary, which can be summarized thusly: "Lady, you say you didn't deserve what you got at H-P and you're absolutely right: Forty-million-plus bucks for running an $80-billion company into a Silicon Valley ditch is, shall we say, a tad undeserved." Still, even now, the old girl can't lose for winning. The timing of her book is/was a publisher's dream come true. All the soiled sheets of H-P are flapping in the breeze these days (see Patty Dunn, above) as Carly's memoirs get prime-time treatment on CBS, et. al.
I have to chuckle whenever I read that current H-P CEO Mark Hurd would have made a great operations exec under Carly. Huh? Even if she'd had the temperament (read: had she been secure enough) for a strong second, why the hell would anyone like him want to salute her? So he could thumb a ride once in while on Air Carly (chopper and jet)? Bask in the reflected glow of greatness? Fiorina apologists like to remember her comments about management being "a performance." What they fail to remember is, yes, it is a performance in that a manager must perform: make the quarterly number, close the deals, deliver the right products on time, mind the store, run the business, earn a profit. She didn't. At least, no profits for HPQ . For Fiorina, Inc., however, the financial outlook is pretty rosy.
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