According to executive recruiters familiar with the situation, internal candidates who were glossed over for the top job are stronger than the new incoming CEO, Leo Apotheker. Choosing an outsider will only alienate the culture more, which regrettably has now been torn apart by a scared board of directors that desperately needs an overhaul.
The only silver lining to today's events is the fact that former Oracle executive and highly regarded venture capitalist Ray Lane will now serve as non-executive chairman. That's a coup for a company who used to have one of the strongest cultures in corporate America.
Now, unfortunately, that era is over. All in one badly intended decision to begin anew following a sequence of incompetence and ineptitude at the highest levels, earning distinction by the New York Times as the Most Inept Board in America: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/business/11nocera.html?ref=hewlett_packard_corporation&pagewanted=all .
Turn the volume down and you can probably hear the employee groans from inside H-P. There once was a time when that sentiment mattered. That time has now permanently passed. What a tragedy.
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