HP Doesn't Need Meg Whitman's Celebrity

Running for elected office in this country is enough to ruin the image of even the most publicly staid, buttoned-down business leader. We can only shake our heads in disbelief when for whatever misguided reason these people start to believe that embarking on such a self-absorbed mission would be the feather in the cap of his or her illustrious career. Why sully oneself with the sleaze of politics? The sleaze of the boardroom is much more well regarded.

Most top-level business leaders – while engaged in their executive pursuits – are not people to the rest of us. They aren’t like our entertainers or our celebrities of whom we crave intimate personal details. We allow our business leaders certain aloofness in that regard. We don’t want to know — and for good reason. But at some point, success breeds an ego big enough to convince such leaders that what they have been doing all these years is leading people, when they have really only been leading the executive-decision process. They mistake their business acumen for qualities of grandiose leadership. Next thing you know, they’re taking to the campaign trail where they must reveal not only their true selves, but often grotesque caricatures of their true selves, with ideals and values all stretched out of proportion to reach the little people they believe will follow them without the carrot of a paycheck dangling in front of them.

Take Meg Whitman, please. Half the people at HP now know too much about Meg Whitman to ever want to work for her. They will, of course, because they have to, but they will not follow the way a real leader wants people to follow. The other half will follow, but they will likely worship her in a way that is unhealthy for everyone, especially for HP itself.

That’s what today’s politics has done to people. Before, Meg Whitman was a superstar entrepreneur who created an empire through her own innovation, drive and business acumen and who got out before she squandered that, but unfortunately not before succumbing to notions of grandeur and trying to become a politician. Now, she is just another do-gooder with money on the good-ol’-boy circuit trying to find lightning in a bottle again and re-establish her reputation in the executive echelon.

I wish her luck because I wish all the people at HP luck. But I sure wonder if Meg Whitman’s celebrity is what the company needs right now.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.