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From the library: Rising to the Challenge by Carly Fiorina

From the library: Rising to the Challenge by Carly Fiorina

Last updated on: September 8, 2015 at 9:57 am by Jane the Actuary

From the library: Rising to the Challenge by Carly Fiorina 2015-09-07T21:36:18-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So, first of all, a big “yay” for CNN listening to protests and agreeing to revise its debate criteria, to include anyone in the top ten, based on poll averages from July 16 to September 10, or based on averages from August 7 to September 10th. (See the National Review’s article, here.) So from all appearances, it’ll be an 11-candidate debate, as Carly is the one candidate who has come from obscurity to, well, less obscurity.

A couple days ago, I wrote up a little summary of Fiorina’s first book, Tough Choices, in which she recounted her career up to the point when she was fired from her position at CEO, and then focused on those last weeks and months to attempt to untangle what happened. In Rising to the Challenge, Fiorina updates her story, with heavy doses of her political philosophy.

Politically, her theme is “unlocking potential” — I’m guessing this is probably one component of her standard stump speech at this point. Here’s how she phrases it:

Bureaucracies and crony capitalism crush potential in America. The greatest lever for unlocking it is leadership. When I started out in my career in business, I used to think that leadership was measured in fancy titles, power, and corner offices. . . . But I’ve learned since then that I was wrong. There are lots of people who have big power, big titles, and big offices who do not lead.. . .

True leadership is about seeing a different future and changing the order of things to achieve that future. The leader’s job is not to be improsioned by the conventional wisdom but to be out in front of it. As Margaret Thatcher said, you can’t lead from the middle of a crowd. Leaders see things that others don’t yet see, which is why they are frequently criticized in their time. Great leaders see great futures and lead the rest of us toward them (p. 20 – 21.)

Biographically, three significant things happened to her in the ten years between the HP firing and the writing of the book in 2015: she mourned the death of her (step-)daughter, she fought breast cancer, and she ran (and lost) against Barbara Boxer for Senate. Before this, though, she provides more detail on the aftermath of the termination from HP, from the supportive calls (including one from President Bush, the day after, and one from Steve Jobs) to her belief that the leaks, the spying scandal, and the subsequent resignation of board members was evidence that her departure was due to the dysfunction of the board, rather than her own failings as CEO.

After leaving HP, she served on three boards/committees which had the aim of helping government bureaucracies move past their inertia to transform themselves in the way that she had worked to transform HP. She played a small role in the McCain campaign, including a “Washington gaffe” — that is, speaking the truth that Sarah Palin would not have been able to run HP (but neither could any of McCain, Obama, or Biden have done so either, because of the particular skill set and experience it requires). And she began to have conversations about running for office herself.

Before she could make this decision, however, she received a cancer diagnosis, which led to three lumpectomy surgeries, chemotherapy, and ultimately a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Then, on October 9, 2009, she learned about her (step-)daughter’s death. But, after much deliberation, and discussion with supporters, she announced her candidacy for Senate on November 4th.

When she first announced, her only primary opponent was a long-shot Tea Party Republican; then, in January, unexpectedly, she gained a primary opponent in Tom Campbell, a former congressman, and had to fight a primary battle even before the general election. Of course, she won the former and lost the latter — 52% to 42%. Fiorina attributes the loss to Boxer’s much greater funding, the Democrats’ labelling her as an evil corporate job-cutter (here, Fiorina acknowledges that she failed to defend herself against these charges), and the Democrats’ success in crafting the so-called War on Women narrative. Against this, Fiorina hoped to paint herself as the defender of the middle class and Boxer as the out-of-touch Washington insider, placing obstacles in the way of small businesses, but she failed to make headway.

After the election, she joined the masses leaving California. She had, after all, spent her pre-HP years on the East Coast, and her other (step-)daughter Tracy, and husband and children, lived there, so in 2011 she left California and bought a home in Virginia. And instead of Californian politics, she got involved in various charitable and political groups at the national level, including the American Conservative Union (host of the annual CPAC), where she later became chairman of the board. It was there where, in the winter of 2014, she gave a speech pushing back on the Democrats’ renewed attempt to proclaim that Republicans were waging a “war on women”:

“We respect all women and don’t insult them by thinking that all they care about are reproductive rights. All issues are women’s issues,” I said. “We are half of this great nation.” The audience cheered their approval.

“Women balance the checkbooks. That’s why women care that we can’t balance the checkbook in Washington, D.C. Women make the health care and education decisions for our families. Women worry about our own jobs, ur children’s futures, and our husbands’ jobs.” (p. 142).

This speech became the catalyst for creating the Unlocking Potential Project, in which she and others conducted training sessions aimed at helping women to get involved with (conservative Republican) politics, and to talk to other women about their beliefs, in advance of the 2014 elections.

Fiorina has also worked with the One Woman Initiative, co-founded in 2008 with Condoleeza Rice; this organization aimed to help women in third world countries. She later became involved with Opportunity International, a microfinance organization, and ultimately merged these together.

At the end of the book, Fiorina returns to the theme she started with, unlocking potential. Back in 2000, she had given a speech in which she defined the four characteristics of future techonology: DMVP, Digital, Mobile, Virtual, and Personal. Just as inexorable as this technological change is, so, too, is the force of globalization, and as much as we enjoy the benefits of technology (hard to believe that when she gave that speech in 2000, the iPhone was still 7 years away), with the challenges these twin forces bring.

Fiorina returns to her Leadership Framework from Tough Choices — four parameters each of which needs to be addressed to succeed in transformative change:

Goals and Strategy: what’s the objective?

Structures and Processes: how do we organize ourselves to achieve the goals?

Metrics and Rewards: How do we measure progress, and reward success?

Culture and Behavior: What are core values and desired behaviors?

Applying this to the U.S., she says our goals are:

– to unlock the potential of all Americans;

– to revitalize Main Street with, among other things, simplified taxes and regulation for small businesses;

– to fundamentally transform government bureaucracies (pointing to the VA scandal, and the failure of the healthcare exchange rollout);

– to restore American leadership in the global economy;

– to be the innovation powerhouse (including protection of intellectual property);

and to restore American leadership in the world.

The structures/processes to be applied involve systematically reexamining every government program, every law and regulation, and implementing zero-based budgeting.

Her metric/reward proposals include recreating the civil service on a pay-for-performance basis, and rewarding those who eliminate waste rather than (via paychecks) those who perpetuate it.

And with respect to culture and behavior, well, she calls on politicians to adopt at least a minimal amount of respect for each other.

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