21 Million Greenbacks To Soften An Empress' Fall

Last weekend, while the rest of the nation stayed glued to their TV sets, a different kind of drama was unfolding in a Chicago hotel room. The board members of HP were huddled over plans to ease out Carly Fiorina, the empress of the silicon-valley icon, HP. So why am I writing about yesterday's news? While news-stories focused on her performance as the CEO, I thought I might sound off on what I found interesting from my own perspective, a perspective I am sure is shared to a certain extent by my fellow b-school bloggers. Some Carly factoids:

• Yes, Carly has an MBA (from University of Maryland, College Park). Damn sure it helped her. The negotiations class at UoMD must've helped her snag that 21 mil parting payoff.
• I will never forget her cake-in lieu-of-bread moment when she decided to ladle out the whackamole to 3000 employees while she dipped into the corporate coffers to get herself a shiny new Lear (or a Gulfstream or an F-16 - I am getting carried away, the last one, no that's not her).
• See, now here's where we are peas in a pod - Carly and your's truly are INTJs. What exactly is that beast, you may ask. Fair enough; in an Organization and Management class, I was introduced to the science of personality types based on the Myers-Briggs typology. Turned out that your's truly and a lot of acquaintances were of the same type. So is Carly; in fact she was featured in class as a case-study of the INTJ type. To cut to the chase, INTJs are supposedly big-picture people, they thrive on change and cannot be bothered with the daily mundanities. Such mind-numbing chores are supposedly the forte of ISTJs. Isn't that a pity since this very same trait proved to be the undoing of Carly 'Humpty Dumpty' Fiorina. To quote from BusinessWeek: " "[Fiorina's] good with marketing. She's a good speaker for the company," says a former HP executive. "But this is a company that doesn't need a statesman. It needs a hands-on operations person." So all you wannabe MBAs out there, go take the Myers-Briggs test and remember to sign up for those oh-so-boring operations courses while in school.
• Finally, I cannot resist - some circles talk about how Carly's chromosomes were a factor. She was hired because she was an A performer, but fired because she was a double X? Get a grip already.