I’ve heard it attributed to a host of sources from Albert Einstein and Tony Robbins to “ancient Chinese proverb,” and it rings true every time: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a definition of insanity.” For a living example of insanity applied to succession planning, look no farther than the HP board. Let’s review.
Lew Platt was the last CEO of HP to have come up from the ranks. He joined the company in 1966 as an entry-level engineer.
In 1999, the HP board decided to recruit an outsider as CEO, there evidently being no competent insider candidates. They snapped up Carly Fiorina, who had been named “Most Powerful Woman in Business” by Fortune the year before. She oversaw a “transformation” of the company that resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs and a merger with Compaq that resulted in a messy fight with the board and the Hewlett family. She resigned in 2005, citing “differences with the board.”
A month later, Mark Hurd was hired from NCR. He resigned from HP in August 2010 after being investigated for sexual harassment and irregularities in his expense reports.
A month later, the board announced that they had hired Leo Apotheker as CEO. He had resigned from SAP after that company declined to renew his contract. He had been the CEO there for ten months.
Apotheker lasted longer at HP. He made it to eleven months. On September 22, 2011, the board fired Apotheker and immediately appointed Meg Whitman (an HP Board member for 8 months) as the new CEO. Ray Lane, the Executive Chairman of the Board told Reuters that we shouldn’t see this as another crazy action by the HP board.
“Lane vowed that the days of board dysfunction — the wire-tapping scandal, the firing of Mark Hurd after a sexual harassment probe, and the hiring of Apotheker — were over.”
Perhaps. Personally, I’m skeptical. That’s because I don’t see any change in the basic, dysfunctional pattern of behavior.
HP has had plenty of time to develop internal candidates for leadership roles in whatever sort of “new era” they imagine. Either they haven’t done that or they are simply in love with the idea of hiring a new CEO in less than a month. It hasn’t been working, folks, and the fact that you’ve done it again makes me think you’ve met the test for “insanity.” It’s not “succession.” Instead it’s swapping out CEOS. And there’s precious little planning involved.
