Focus Leadership Blog

Name: Carly Fiorina

Occupation: Former executive vice president at AT&T; former CEO of Hewlett-Packard; current Senate candidate

Career Highlights: Fiorina got a B.A. in philosophy and medieval history from Stanford University, wisely employing the strategy of pursuing two majors so fundamentally useless that they came back around to being essential. Post-Stanford, her schooling was more traditionally business-oriented: an MBA in marketing from the University of Maryland: College Park, then a Master of Science in management from MIT. She tried her hand at a law degree at UCLA, but dropped out after one semester, a humanities graduate to the very end.
She worked her way up the ladder from there, working secretarial and receptionist positions everywhere from Hewlett-Packard to real estate firm Marcus & Millichap. She also taught English in Italy, again putting that humanities major to good use. Fiorina joined AT&T in 1980 as a management trainee and became a senior vice president there, overseeing the company's hardware and systems division. After spearheading Lucent's spinoff from AT&T, she was appointed president of Lucent's consumer products business, and began collecting other, even more convoluted job titles from that day forward until Fortune Magazine rated her as the most powerful woman in business.
Sadly, her performance as Hewlett-Packard's CEO didn't do much for the reputation she'd earned. After controversial decisions to split HP, merge the part she kept with Compaq, attempt an acquisition of computer-services business EDS, and more or less champion tech-job outsourcing, she was forced out after the company's stock price had dropped by half. These days, she's a professional board member and a challenger to Barbara Boxer's Senate seat. Her campaign thus far has notably produced the worst political ad of all time, aimed at fellow Republican Tom Campbell.

Dominant Pattern(s): There sure are a lot of Drivers in business, eh? Sheesh. Add Carly Fiorina to that list, along with Organizer. She's good with details and knew how to advance in a business environment where the "glass ceiling" all but had steel reinforcements. Her tenure at AT&T was one of very specific tasks and even more specific (to the point of pedantic) job titles, and she prospered.

Recommendation(s) for Improvement: Visionary. She seems to have trouble conceptualizing, which is odd considering the abstract concepts she studied as a college student. Her HP career and political campaign thus far have shown that she's uncomfortable with the big picture, and gets lost in a non-linear, sandbox business atmosphere. We recommend cracking open some of those old Philosophy textbooks and working on logic problems, then spend some time playing Grand Theft Auto for a more fun, if less mature, angle on open-ended problem solving. The key is to establish a comfort level with thinking around problems when no immediate, rational solutions present themselves. And as always, remember to breathe.