For a company to be great, it needs long-run vision and short-run operational excellence.
Carly Fiorina had a powerful vision for HP. She led the acquisition of Compaq - which turns out to have been a good deal - against fierce internal opposition.
But she lacked the operational skills to get the company doing what she wanted
She was replaced by Mark Hurd, a penny-pinching efficiency expert.
He slashed costs, boosted margins and destroyed HP’s future by slashing R&D investment from 9% of revenues to 2%.
Back in 2006, Business Week ran an article called The New Kingmakers Of Executive Placement. In it they praised
Andrea Redmond and Charles Tribbett for "shaking up the staid world of executive recruitment".
The key to their success? "They're not old white men."
Together they are trying to get companies and their boards to think differently about leadership.
They talked HP into hiring Mark Hurd.
"There was no one on the board who had ever heard of Mark Hurd," admits one of HP's directors. And no one thought NCR [the company he was running] had the complexity of HP.
Even so, Redmond and Tribbett were certain Hurd was right for the job, and they worked hard to open the minds of the board members to that possibility.
Morit Rozen, ERE Expo, Oct 26 2010, Hollywood, Florida