Poison on the Hewlett-Packard Board: James B. Stewart’€™s New Yorker Story

The
current New Yorker has a compelling and disheartening story by James B. Stewart called "The Kona Files" about the nasty conflict and leaks to the press on the
Hewlett-Packard board of directors that unfolded in 2005 and 2006. This internal mudslinging and mistrust culminated in chairman of the board Patricia Dunn and
several others being charged with multiple felony counts in the "pretexting" or spying scandal.  It isn’t available
online, but Stewart story alone is worth the price of the magazine.  I won’t go into the twists and turns, although
I can say it does present a convincing case that Dunn is getting a raw deal and
that billionaire Tom
Perkins€“ — who resigned from the board in a rage when he found out that HP
was spying on board members — acted like an arrogant jerk throughout the
process. And the whole thing is also sad because  Dunn is not only fighting felony charges, she is fighting  ovarian cancer at the same time.

The
thing that struck me most strongly about the article was that — while accounts vary
and finger pointing is rampant — everyone seems to agree that anger, mistrust,
and personal animosity raged throughout the board for years. Dunn and Perkins had nasty run-ins about
everything from how much board attention should be devoted to complying with
Sarbanes-Oxley requirements to Dunn’s hesitation to say something nice about
Perkins steamy novel €œSex
and the Single Zillionaire.  Ousted
HP CEO Carly Fiorina, €“ who was interviewed for the story, reported that she
had breakfast with her replacement, Mark Hurd, in April, 2006 (it was the first
time the two ever met). Hurd told
Fiorina that he was "exasperated by tensions within the board" and that there
were occasions when "board members had almost come to blows."

I
don’t fully believe what anyone involved in this mess says, as there is so much
self-interest, posturing for a forthcoming trial, and so much emotion that it
is hard to know what actually happened. But the thing that strikes me is this a
cautionary tale about group dynamics and how bad they can get. The people involved in this drama are all
extremely smart and accomplished, and most have a history of quite sensible
behavior. But when conflict, anger, and rampant mistrust started flying, they
all seemed to turn into stubborn and vindictive idiots.

There
is a huge literature on group dynamics that has ideas about how to repair such
groups. You might start with J. Richard Hackman’€™s Leading
Teams if you want to learn some of this stuff. And therapists can be effective at helping
dysfunctional groups – indeed, the HP board clearly needed a therapist. The best and most vivid example I know of an
effective group therapist is in the film about the heavy metal rock group
Metallica, called €œSome
Kind of Monster. Check it out;
that rock group’s psychologist might have helped that HP board.

Now,
for a short "€œasshole analysis:" What would I suggest to friend who was on that
board€“ or anyone else in a situation like this where the asshole poisoning is
so severe? Get out as fast as you can and get as far away from those people as you
can: Only bad things will happen to you if you stick around. It will probably make you physically sick and
almost certainly turn you into an asshole like the rest of them.  Sometimes it might be worth it to you, or your organization, to battle it out, but as I read this story, I mostly saw people trapped in a vicious circle that just got nastier and nastier — and stopping such cycles is mighty hard and, even when accomplished, nearly always damages everyone involved in some manner.