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Analysis: HP Spins CEO Carousel And Picks Wrong Horse In Apotheker

October 1st, 2010 elifemagz Leave a comment Go to comments

CIO – In veteran and collegiate sports, it’s referred to as the “coaching carousel”: Each year, losing sporting organizations unceremoniously glow their head coaches. Words such as “disappointing” and “change” and “new direction” are bandied about.

Weeks or even days later, a couple of of the same rejected coaches are ceremoniously introduced as the new trainer of other (losing) group in need of change. Words such as “experienced” and “track record” and “good fit” are tossed around. (The NFL’s Eric Mangini and NBA’s Mike Dunleavy jump to mind.)

The platitudes upsurge freely-whether formed on any emergence of reality, or not. New strategies and schemes are voiced to produce fad amid the constant air blower base.

What happened in the meantime to outcome such a change in the discard coaches? Who knows.

But what you do know is that a company’s rejected CEO may be another’s appreciated find. At smallest in the eyes of old-school corporate boards.

By now, everybody has listened that Hurd’s deputy at HP is nothing other than Leo Apotheker , the multi-lingual one-time CEO of craving program hulk SAP. Apotheker, you’ll recall, was asked to step down from his CEO post not even a year in to his plagued tenure.

When SAP cut Apotheker lax on Super Bowl Sunday 2010, the firm was a sluggish businessman in need of a re-charge. At the time, I observed: SAP was a mess. Its still new-ish CEO, Leo Apotheker, was forced out , followed by a in depth house-cleaning at the top. Employee restlessness was running prevalent at the German ERP giant. Rather than SAP customers conversing about apps, everybody was focused on SAP continuance and encouragement pricing , that is not a great thing. Competitors aged and new were chipping divided at its number-one mark in the craving apps universe. Revenues, increase and working margins were all down year over year . If you could have deliberate SAP’s change at the beginning of 2010, the many exact evaluation would have been: loss .

Sticking to the “script,” SAP proudly voiced their new co-CEOs, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, using the difference “product innovation” and “profitable growth” and “innovation” (again). The SAP Supervisory Board thanked Apotheker for his “enormous grant to the success of SAP.” ( Insert well-timed cough here. )