迷失的惠普（节选）

    去年9月，梅格•惠特曼走马上任，出任惠普公司（Hewlett-Packard）新一任首席执行官。就任几个月后，她就和员工开了一系列见面会，了解情况。参加会面的工程师和经理人当时的表情恐怕不能只用闷闷不乐来形容。惠特曼发言时，许多员工直直地盯着她看，另外一些人则完全不和新来的老板有任何眼神交流。实际上，他们只顾低着头，一个劲儿地在手持数码设备上敲敲打打。

    一个员工不无挑衅地告诉她：“你的话正在博客上直播。”惠特曼立即反击道：“你们这么干是泄露公司机密。这说明这个公司的氛围很不开心。你这是希望惠普没好日子过。”顿时，人们停下手，屋里突然变得鸦雀无声，手机也纷纷被调低了铃声的音量。

    员工公然蔑视公司首脑，同时惠特曼承认身处困境，这些迹象都表明，自从去年遭遇了一系列让人蒙受奇耻大辱的重大挫折后，这家技术巨头的内部情况已经糟糕到了什么程度。惠特曼就任首席执行官之前的不过几个月时间里，惠普先是耗巨资推出平板电脑，最终却宣告失败；随后，是否要剥离庞大的个人电脑业务这个话题引发了一场令人痛心、沸沸扬扬的公开讨论；再接着，在不到七年时间里，惠普的第三任首席执行官被扫地出门。

    如果惠普遭遇的这些麻烦只局限于2011年的这几个月时间里就好了。但迄今为止的十年间，这个公司有时候更像是一出拙劣的真人秀，而不是全球最伟大的企业之一。2002年，惠普并购康柏公司（Compaq）时，云谲波诡的明争暗斗交替上演，公司的公关危机由此拉开了大幕。随后，沃尔特•休利特斗胆表达异议，结果却遭到行事高调的首席执行官卡莉•菲奥莉娜当众嘲弄，这场危机算是恶化到了无以复加的境地。要知道，休利特既是董事会成员，同时也是惠普公司创始人之一的公子。同时，公司董事会内部不和，四分五裂。形势失控，某些董事甚至向媒体泄密，而董事长则雇佣了私家侦探，截获这些董事（及相关记者）的电话录音，一定要揪出告密者。最终，公司董事长和首席执行官被迫前往国会宣誓，为自己辩解一番，这些尔虞我诈才算了事。随后，被视为公司救星的首席执行官马克•赫德遭到驱逐，因为他被指控与一位营销顾问有染，而这位顾问曾是色情片女星。涉事双方都坚决、断然、明确地否认搞了什么见不得人的勾当。

    只要深入惠普的董事会，素材就够“菲尔博士”（著名访谈类节目——译注）制作整整一个月的节目了。这些董事们明争暗斗的劲头堪比初中生之间的拉帮结派，而不是大家心目中明辨是非、引领方向的积极力量。正像我们所看到的那样，惠普的董事们有时候甚至拒绝同处一室，同时相互指责对方是骗子、告密者、叛徒。而在遴选首席执行官这项他们最重要的使命上，他们又一再失误：他们挑中的新领导最明显的特征就是，这个人必然跟前任背道而驰。

    所有这些已使公司无法解决它所面临的根本问题：简言之，惠普已经迷失了方向。公司已经陷入生死存亡的危机中。它仍然是个庞然大物，在“《财富》美国500强榜单”上排名第10位，2011年的销售收入高达1,270亿美元，赢利为70亿美元。但是其发展前景堪忧。比如，2011年的盈利水平比前年降低了19%。在几乎每个前沿业务领域，惠普都四面受敌，市场份额缩水，赢利能力下降。

    译者：清远

    A few months after she took over as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) last September, Meg Whitman held one in a series of get-to-know-you meetings with employees. To say the audience, a group of software engineers and managers, was sullen would be an understatement. As Whitman spoke, many of them glared at her. Others weren't making eye contact with their new boss. Their heads were down, and they were tapping furiously on handheld devices.

    "Your comments are being live-blogged," one employee told her defiantly. Whitman challenged the man. "You all have taken leaking to a new art form," she said. "It's a sign of an unhappy company. You wish HP ill." The tapping suddenly stopped, and as the room fell silent, the mobile devices were lowered.

    The employees' open contempt for the head of the company and Whitman's acknowledgment of their misery were signs of just how dire things had gotten inside the technology titan after a humiliating series of epic stumbles last year. Just in the few months before Whitman became CEO, there was the costly failed launch of a tablet computer, a mortifying public waffling over whether to spin off the company's giant personal computer business, and then the drumming-out of its third CEO in less than seven years.

    If only HP's troubles were confined to a few months in 2011. For a decade now the company has sometimes seemed more like a tawdry reality show than one of the world's great enterprises. The public dysfunction started with the vicious infighting over HP's merger with Compaq in 2002, which reached its nadir when the company's high-profile CEO, Carly Fiorina, pilloried Walter Hewlett, a board member and son of a company founder, for daring to voice his opposition. There was a board riven by feuds -- so out of control that some directors were leaking secrets to the press while the chairman of the board was hiring private investigators to obtain their phone records (and those of reporters) to uncover the perpetrators. That bit of skullduggery ended with the company's chairman and its CEO both dragged before Congress to explain themselves under oath. Then came the ouster of the company's putative savior, CEO Mark Hurd, after allegations relating to his interactions with a marketing consultant who had been an actress in risqué movies; both parties absolutely, positively, categorically denied that there was any hanky-panky.

    Dr. Phil could fill a month's worth of shows just examining HP's board, whose dynamics have resembled those of rival junior high school cliques more than what is supposed to be a sage guiding force. At times, as we'll see, HP directors have refused to be in the same room with one another and have accused each other of lying, leaking, and betrayal. Time and again they've failed in their choice of CEO -- their most important task -- selecting a new leader whose most salient trait is that he or she is the opposite of the last one.

    All of this has impeded the company from tackling the fundamental problem it faces: Simply put, Hewlett-Packard has lost its way. The company is in the midst of an existential crisis. It remains a behemoth,No. 10on theFortune 500, with $127 billion in sales last year and $7 billion in earnings. But the trajectory is ominous. Those profits, for example, were 19% lower in 2011 than in the previous year. HP's business is under siege on almost every front, losing market share and facing declining margins.