Personally, I have seen very few CEOs who are motivating to employees. IMO almost all of them are used car salesmen. And we can cover the best of them:
Everyone I know who worked for Apple hated Steve Jobs. Of course, these were pre-"Apple renaissance billionaire" employees. Lou Gerstner? Maybe you should ask what Lotus folks thought about him. ;) Gates? His strong side wasn't employee motivation either.
On the other hand, I've met one CEO, who was kinda nice and personable. He was fired recently for "destroying" the company he led. While I don't think "destruction" was his fault, IMHO being personable won't help you if company sinks, and being an asshole does not matter if company grows/excels.
Of course Apotheker will be hosed if HP continues to shrink when Dell prospers. ;)
You are misrepresenting his memo though. It wasn't addressed "to his grunts". And IMHO it's pretty OK as internal crap memos go. Even at a company with IMHO great CEO, I've seen him sending crap HR memos to "grunts": "Travel restricted, don't sneeze, don't print, save the pennies, blah blah blah". I would not judge the company by its memos. ;)
I am wondering why everyone is so down on HP PC sector slowdown. I looked that 10Q and PCs are ~30% revenues but they have been only ~15% of earnings for last year or longer. What's the deal to throw a fit about this now?
BTW, I was wrong in my previous writing where I said that MSFT and INTC are better proxies for HP and DELL. At least for HP, MSFT and INTC are not proxies since HP has majority of revenues and earnings from non-Wintel sources. |
