Author: Carly Fiorina

Publisher: Penguin Audio; Abridged edition

Pub. in: October, 2006

ISBN: 0143059076

Pages:  

Measurements: 5.6 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches

Origin of product: USA

Order code: BB00065

Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0143059073

A long-awaited memoir from one of the most-talked-about top executives and business women in corporate history.

As a career consultant, I continue to admire anyone who can navigate the rough seas of corporate life. I am far too much of a maverick. I'm awed by those who can not only achieve great corporate success but articulate how and why.

So I agree with reviewers who say they feel they're reading a management textbook, but its value goes beyond leadership. I recommend Tough Choices to anyone considering a corporate career. Technical savvy gets taken for granted. What gets you ahead is an ability to handle touchy political situations and to read environments. Fiorina makes it seem easy. I especially admire her stories when gender differences were made obvious: her foray into a strip bar with a key client and her willingness to step out of the box and risk "outrageous" behavior when meeting with some tough guy sales types.

While some readers might find her early story tedious,I was fascinated. Corporate life is about fanatical attention to detail, lots of meetings and fending off colleagues who want to see you fail. Fiorina somehow mastered these skills, although nothing in her background seemed to prepare her for this environment. Her family had no business experience. She gained some experience through part-time jobs in college. But somehow she knew how to distinguish herself from the dozens of management trainees who would have entered AT&T's management training program with her.

I'm always surprised by the nitty-gritty, earthy elements of life at the top. I remember hearing about a CEO (whose name I've forgotten) who was known for taking out a clipper and cutting his toenails when meetings got too long.

So I shouldn't have been surprised to find a senior executive who wears flip-flops to meetings. Fiorina spends many hours meeting with psychologists who assess her ability to lead H-P. She gets awakened in the middle of the night by a crazed Board member screaming in her ear.

Many of her points are right on. She's absolutely right when she says most people don't understand the way business works and most certainly are clueless about the lives of contemporary CEOs. Martha Stewart was criticized for hiring housekeepers and other helpers, but that's what corporate executives do. Fiorina's compensation level was commensurate with her peers.

As others have noted, Fiorina downplays her personal life. She briefly mentions divorcing her first husband but wisely spares us the gory details. Her current husband, Frank, manages to be wonderfully supportive while maintaining his own career. Still, I would have liked some glimpses of how she made everything work. How did she find time to keep her hair and nails done perfectly?

I am not familiar with H-P and can't comment on the accuracy of Fiorina's "last days" chapter. She admits she made mistakes when dealing with her Board. As others have suggested, perhaps she should have dumped the Board and installed her own supporters. She acquiesced too easily when Board members urge her to bring back Tom Perkins, who was over the age limit and lacking the specific expertise Fiorina sought. "He misses the Board," they say. "He needs something to do."

I almost laughed out loud.

From my experience with clients and career strategy, I'd say Fiorina's mistake came during recruitment. On page 163, she acknowledges she didn't meet with the founding family members during the recruitment process: "I didn't know enough to ask for such a meeting, and they didn't seem to think it was necessary."

In my own career change materials, I emphasize that career success differs from career change. I get calls from senior managers who acknowledge they made mistakes when they changed jobs and certainly when they changed careers. Fiorina's omission is not at all surprising: she understood big companies but not family-owned businesses.

And perhaps she accepted a job where she was destined to be the bad guy. By her accounts, H-P faced huge challenges, including tolerance for poor performance. The Compaq acquisition seemed to be inevitable, anticipated rather than initiated by H-P.

Did Fiorina turn around the company, so her successor now enjoys the benefits that flow from Fiorina's presidency? Did she just run out of time to implement necessary changes? Or was she a cold, calculating CEO who lost touch with her employees and her Board?

Future analysts can ponder these questions. The rest of us can learn a great deal as we read this book. If I were still teaching in MBA programs, I'd find a way to work Tough Choices into the syllabus, for any marketing or management course.

(From quoting Cathy Goodwin, USA)

Target readers: General business readers, but we especially recommend this book to readers who want to gain insights into how American companies work, readers who are eager to be exposed to the corporate world, and anyone interested in the management processes that are part of what goes on when you are at the top of a large corporation.