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For five and half years, Carly
Fiorina led HP through major internal changes,
the worst technology slump in decades, and the
most controversial merger in high-tech history.
Yet just as things were about to turn around,
she was abruptly fired, making front page news
around the world.
Fiorina has been
the subject of endless debate and speculation.
But she has never spoken publicly about crucial
details of her time at HP, about the mysterious
circumstances of her firing, or about many other
aspects of her landmark career. Until now.
In this extraordinarily
candid memoir, she reveals the private person
behind the public persona. She shares her triumphs
and failures, her deepest fears and most painful
confrontations. She shows us what it was like
to be an ambitious young woman at stodgy old AT&T
and then a fast-track executive during the spin-off
of Lucent Technologies.
Above all, Fiorina
describes how she drove the transformation of
legendary but deeply troubled HP, in the face
of opposition. She was an outsider in every way
imaginable — the first CEO not promoted
from within; a woman leader in a male-dominated
culture; a marketing expert in a company that
worshipped engineers; an easterner surrounded
by Silicon Valley lifers. As she writes, “Time
had stood still for the people of HP; they did
not know how to move forward without their founders.
They were afraid of change; what if changing anything
meant destroying everything?”
One of Fiorina’s
big themes is that “in the end business
isn’t just about numbers; it’s about
people.” This book goes beyond the caricature
of the “powerful woman executive”
to show who she really is and what the rest of
us — male or female, in business or not
— can learn from the tough choices she made
along the way.
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