carlyFiornia

CARLY FIORINA: CEO of Hewlett Packard

by Peg Townsend

Carly Fiorina has defined sucess in the high tech arena running one of the leading companies in the world.

Carly Fiorina likes to tell a story about Spanish bullfighting when she talks about business.

In bullfighting there is a term called querencia, says the 45-year-old CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. The querencia is the spot in the ring to which the bull returns.

Each bull has a different querencia, says Fiorina, but as the bullfight continues, and the animal becomes more threatened, it returns more and more often to his spot.

As he returns to his querencia, he becomes more predictable.

"As he becomes more predictable, he becomes more vulnerable," Fiorina says.

And so, in the end, the matador is able to kill the bull because instead of trying something new, the bull returns to what is familiar. His comfort zone, says Fiorina.

That's part of the reason one of Fiorina's first tasks when she took the reins of the 61-year-old computer giant, was to give all of her team new jobs so that they could see familiar things in a new way.

"Successful companies, like successful people, embrace change," says Fiorina. "They see change as the way forward rather than fear it."

Today, Fiorina is one of the highest-paid executives in the land of stratospheric salaries, Silicon Valley, earning about $5 million in salary and performance-linked bonuses with $65.6 million worth of stock awards.

She also has twice been named to the top of Fortune magazine's list of the 50 most powerful businesswomen in America, doing what may observers thought could never be done.

The woman who had been a secretary at Hewlett-Packard has injected a dose of urgency into the once-stodgy, button-down company. She has restructured, cut bureaucracy and forged new parternships.

And Fiorina, the woman who Business Week described as having "a silver tongue and an iron will," did it all because she has never been one to shrink from change - or a challenge.

Born in Austin, Texas, Fiorina was the daughter of a law professor and judge, and a talented abstract artist.

At the age of 4, Fiorina says, she told her parents she wanted to be a fireman. Not because she wanted to put out fires, but because she loved the color red and thought the black and white dogs were cool.

Even then, she says, she was a child who wasn't afraid to commit to a different path.

And her parents encouraged her.

She studied classical languages in the seventh grade and read Aristotle in the original Greek. She went to schools in Ghana, London, North Carolina and Palo Alto, Calif.

She continued the path by studying medieval history and philosophy at Stanford.

But after Stanford, she decided to do something a bit more traditional and follow in her father's footsteps and study law.

She hated it.

"For me," she says, "the emphasis on precedent felt confining."

It was a hard decision for the young Fiorina. She says she literally didn't sleep for three months thinking she was letting her father down.

Finally, she told him she was quitting law school.

But what seemed at the moment to be an ill-advised move was the first step on her path to being a CEO, Fiorina says.

"The lesson I learned at that life marker was, love what you do, or don't do it."

For awhile, Fiorina taught English in Bologna, Italy, and then got a job at a commercial brokerage where, according to Investor's Business Daily, she found something she loved and was good at: business.

So she went back to school and earned an MBA in marketing from University of Maryland and a master of science degree from MIT's Sloan School.

Sitting in her cap and gown at MIT, Fiorina never envisioned herself as a CEO. Nor, she says, did she ever envision herself as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a company where she had been a secretary in the shipping department while a Stanford undergrad.

But while you often can't see where your path is headed, there is a way to figure out which fork to take, she advises.

"You have to master not only the art of listening to your head, you must also master listening to your heart and listening to your gut," says Fiorina.

"One has to look beyond the immediate choice of it all."

Fiorina loves to quote John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in their book "The Social Life of Information."

"The way forward is paradoxically, not to look ahead, but to look around," she says.

Fiorina's first job was at AT&T where she worked as a sales rep. She made a name for herself selling telephone service to federal agencies but, in 1989, decided to take a riskier path.

Friends warned her that moving to the company's equipment division, a spot known as an unglamorous, male-dominated techie domain, would kill her career

But Fiorina saw it differently.

Change and risk were what brought opportunity.

So she moved.

It wasn't always easy, but Fiorina has a way of smoothing obstacles. She told U.S. News of going to Korea where foreign businessmen are traditionally taken to a kisaeng house. There, they are entertained by the Korean equivalent of geisha girls.

But there were no such thing as kisaeng boys and her hosts didn't want this blond businesswoman from the U.S. to feel slighted.

No problem, Fiorina told them.

That night she got the full kisaeng experience of food, alcohol and flattery.

The hostess "just changed some of the adjectives," said Fiorina.

It was that ability to adapt that has become one of Fiorina's trademarks. In fact, she often quotes Charles Darwin when asked her philosophy of change. "It is not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent," she quotes. "It is those most adaptive to change."

By the time Fiorina was 40, she was in charge of North American sales of a division that would later become Lucent Technologies. A few years later, she managed a spin-off of the company, one of the largest and most successful initial public offerings on record.

That's when she caught the eye of Hewlett-Packard which was looking for a new CEO.

According to Businessweek Online, the company's search committee was looking for someone who could conceptualize broad strategies, could deliver quarterly financial goals, bring an urgency to the company and have the management skills to lead a new vision throughout the company.

Out of 300 candidates, Fiorina got the nod.

Fiorina doesn't like to talk about glass ceilings or about women's struggles in a male-dominated business climate. "My gender is interesting, but it is not the subject of the story here," she said when she got the CEO job.

Instead, Fiorina likes to talk about a world where, she says "ideas and creativity are the new form of currency."

She likes to talk about reinvention - about changing the fundamental way companies do business.

"I think reinvention for all of us is not a nice-to-do, it's a got-to-do," she says.

A leader's job, Fiorina believes, is to create a place where "people's minds and hearts can be inventive, brave, human and strong."

It's one of the things Fiorna's employees remember about her.

They tell stories of how, while she was demanding, Fiorina would often send flowers and balloons to employees when they reached their goals. They remember how she would work right alongside them, putting in long hours as deadlines approached, and how when one of her staff member's wife got sick, she made sure he got medical advice and counseling.

"Leadership," she says, "comes in small acts as well as bold strokes."

The woman who favors Armani and Versace suits, has a somewhat non-traditional home life too.

Her husband, Frank, retired from AT&T at age 48 so the couple could spend more time together.

But there is little rest for the woman who believes that in order to survive a company must move - and move quickly.

Time is the one thing that keeps her awake at night, she says. "Because time, I believe, is not on any of our sides. I believe that in the economy that exists today, faster is always better than slower, and soon is always better than later."

That's why Fiorina's schedule is packed as tightly as it can be.

Fiorina travels around the world, often getting up at 4 a.m. to fit in a morning run. She meets with presidents and business leaders. She addresses technology conferences and college graduations.

She meets with her team, discusses business over lunch, meets with newspaper and television reporters.

When it all comes down to it, Fiorina says, it's about finding your soul and following it.

"My mother...taught me about the power of inspiration and courage," says Fiorina. "And she did it with a strength and a passion that I wish could be bottled.

"Even when it wasn't easy or convenient, both my mother and father were ultimately true to themselves.... Their definition of greatness was about greatness of character."

And that, Fiorina would say, is the greatest gift of all.