The current (Feb. 19 & 26) issue of The New Yorker magazine has a James Stewart article on the Hewlett Packard Board of Director's leak/pretexting kerfuffle. It's not available online so you'll have to grab a copy of the magazine to read the article.
It's a good article that recaps the whole ugly mess of the HP Board's effort to plug leaks to the press from members of the board. Stewart's a good writer and he does a nice job boiling the he said/she said in this story down so that you can find the main story lines.
This episode, although more or less independent of the whole Carly Fiorina drame at HP, seemed to cap off the Fiorina-era erosion of the HP culture that had helped to make HP such a respected company.
I found the article believable at least partly because it seemed to reinforce some of the thoughts that I have had about this case since reading about as it was unfolding. It seems clear to me that Patricia Dunn is getting a seriously raw deal in being up for multiple felony counts over this case while HP CEO Mark Hurd and the rest of her former colleagues on the HP Board get a pass. Does she bear some responsibility for what went down, absolutely. Should she be defending herself from multiple criminal charges, no freaking way.
Thomas Perkins does not come off well in the article. Nor does he deserve to. The massive ego and "damn the governance rules" attitude that he brings to the table are ample evidence of too many years being worshiped and feared as one of the great powers of the Silicon Valley elite. It's also indicative of what happens when you try to apply the rules and methods that work for private, smaller, earlier stage companies to a mature, massive, public entity like HP. But it is also clear that Perkins, who was close to both Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett, and who was an important player inside HP during the founding days of its computer business, cares deeply for HP.
Stewart's article make it clearer than anything else I've read how some of the internal politics of the HP Board helped drive this whole drama. Some of the early leaks come across as clearly made to support positions that Perkins and his ally, George Keyworth, favored. It's also clear that Perkins has a nasty habit of making personal issues out of disagreements over business issues.
Anyway, it's worth seeking out and reading. It also makes me wonder if Stewart is working on a book about HP, maybe pulling together the Fiorina story and this one. Sort of a high tech industry version of his very good book on Disney.
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