One of the last posts before this one suggested toadies following the big Toad after this “we al stand together” motto…
Well, we were told we had not really been too clear.
Jack Welch, Manager of The Century according to Fortune Magazine in 1999, former CEO at General Electric, certainly stands behind, and certainly stands by, and definitely stands together with.
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20101005/jack-welch-slams-hp-board/?reflink=ATD_yahoo_ticker
apparently here Mr Welch is measuring his respect for HP’s Board…
Quite straight forward, Mr Welch is probably very right in some of his assertions… as having three outsider CEOs in eight years is not really encouraging anyone to believe in leadership capability within the monster HP, he might as well be going a bit too far in his praise and hail about Bradley.
As a matter of fact… wasn’t Toad, from the first days after HP became hurd-less, the foremost runner to the top job? Wasn’t he the most obvious candidate, the one that had most to win?
If so… why did HP’s board take so long (much more than with Carly, much more than with Hurd) to apparently appoint him. If it had been natural and logical, and coming from inside, choosing him and confirming him should not have been major hurdles.
Mr Welch’s extraordinary blast against HP’s Board is, in our opinion, the heaviest attack, even beyond the oracle’s Pythia’s… (quite childish, we believe). But beside being quite right in its beginning propositions, we might have overacted with that specific highlighting of his former employee.
Should he have stopped at the point of remarking HP’s Board lack of developing leadership, we would show no concern and probably full support to his theory… but was is the real point behind such a passionate declaration in defense of the toad? Why on earth has he suddenly steps up to defend the toad publicly in the “Board versus the Toad” case?
If the point was HP’s Board lacking leadership culture, he could have, for the sake of courtesy, mentioned several internal candidates from HP’s, as almost all media did: Bradley himself, Livermore, Donatelli, or even the guy with the funny Pokemon-series name.
Such an even violent defense of Bradley looks as if he had something to win after Bradley’s achievement, should this have happened… Maybe just the self-pride of having been The Manager of the Century mentoring the new Manager of the Biggest Techno Corporation? Not likely in our opinion.
If the toad was really the best candidate… did he really need this “involuntary” allegation from Mr Welch? We don’t think so. Moreover, we really think Mr Welch’s mentioning of the toad alone, by name and first name, nothing less than three times in one sentence has not delivered a nice favor to the toad precisely.
Mr Welch’s opinions are certainly to be respected… if it only were for his age, background and reputation. But as Manager of the Century, he probably is not unaware of corpses in the closet that many toppers frequently have.
Can anybody, including Toad, be sure there are none this time?
Being the Manager of the Century does not necessarily guarantee infallibility and omniscience. There might be reasons he is unaware of that explain why HP prefers to have a pharmacist that became the first SAP top official that had no idea about software coding.
Latin scholars will probably think about “excusatio non petita… accusatio manifesta”…
