HP’s Apotheker comes up empty

I got some heat from readers and HP last month when I used the four-letter B-word (it has a “z” in the middle and an “o” at the end) to describe the company’s new CEO Léo Apotheker. Out of respect for my critics, I told Hewlett-Packard that I would come to the company’s big vision thing this week with an open mind. HP didn’t respond, but I paid attention anyway. I won’t use the B-word again, but phrases like “dog-and-pony show” spring to mind. Apotheker’s performance at the self-styled summit was filled with vision, some of it reasonable, some questionable, but almost entirely lacking in specifics.

Apotheker’s performance was arrogant, filled with phrases like “Who else but HP?” If you’ve ever taken a class in speech writing or legal argumentation, you know that asking a rhetorical question only works when the answer is one you’ll like. If you were talking about the cloud or Big Data and someone said that, you’d think the answer to Apotherker’s rhetorical question would not in fact be HP but rather IBM, Amazon.com, Oracle, or any number of other providers. If you were talking mobile devices and OSes, you’d answer Apple or Google — again, not HP.

[ In an exclusive interview, HP’s new CEO expands on his strategy and offers frank, not so nice assessments of his competitors. | Keep up to date on the key tech industry insights with InfoWorld’s Industry Standard newsletter. ]

What’s worse than the empty vision and the braggadocio is that HP is very late to the cloud and mobile markets. Great companies can certainly catch up, but to do so requires the excellent execution of specific strategies and, yes, tactics. But Apotheker says he doesn’t like to talk tactics, and what he calls strategy is really vision. What’s more, his record of entering new markets at SAP was not good. In fact, he failed his biggest test: entry into the small-business market.

For what it’s worth, Wall Street was hardly impressed with Apotheker’s vision, either. Bill Shope of Goldman Sachs, whose technology coverage is very influential, maintained his “sell” rating right after the summit — not a good sign.

If HP is going to convince corporate IT customers and investors that it can become a leading force, particularly in the cloud, it has to lay out a very clear road map. By not doing so, Apotheker left IT wondering why it should look to HP for leadership.

HP’s missing link between consumer and enterprise One of the most puzzling parts of the HP summit was discussion of Apotheker’s vision of bringing consumer-type innovation to the enterprise. What many of us have been calling the consumerization of IT is a real trend that has become a huge problem because of security, control, and compliance issues. The company that bridges the gap between the cool consumer devices that employees want (and often need) and the requirements of enterprise business will be richly rewarded.

But how does the plan to port WebOS to HP’s PCs, a very late-to-market ploy that’s not getting great reviews, resolve that contradiction? I certainly didn’t know before the summit, and after the summit I still don’t kow. (Neither do others who paid close attention.) Is HP going to take iPhone-like devices and pour in enterprise sauce or take enterprise-class devices and dip them in cool? Sure, it’s a vision we can all get behind, but if HP knows how to execute it, neither Apotheker nor Todd Bradley, the executive VP of HP’s Personal Systems Group, gave us much of a clue that it does.

Indeed, my colleague Eric Knorr, one of the IDG editors who conducted the extended interview with Apotheker, said to him: “That kind of begs the question of where WebOS is going.” Apotheker replied: “Fair question. I’ll talk to you next time.”

You’re bragging that WebOS is going to be on 100 million devices (get real) but you won’t tell us why it really delivers competitive advantage for the enterprise? Why wouldn’t we be scratching our heads? Or deciding it’s an empty promise?

The leadership vacuum Apotheker’s appointment as CEO following the ignominious exit of Mark Hurd surprised lots of people in the industry, so asking him what he brings to the table is a reasonable question. His answer in the extended interview: “I’m almost tempted to say I don’t think I need to answer that question, but I won’t go that far … I believe that I bring to the table a certain number of unique assets, like any other human being when they’re brought to the table. Mine is to have a pretty broad view on what information technology is and where it can go, and then translate that into a strategy and then into an executable plan.”

Are you impressed by that?

Apotheker came into the job facing huge management challenges. You don’t need an MBA to know that the company’s leadership structure is badly in need of an overhaul. Did we hear about that this week? No. I guess that’s just a tactic (!) and not a strategy.

HP’s board of directors has been holding a master class in crummy management and compliance for years — from its handling of the Hurd affair to its lunatic efforts to spy on journalists allegedly in possession of leaked information. And it got a lot of criticism for hiring Apotheker, whose pay package is about $47 million. So you’d think that Apotheker, as an outsider with absolutely no responsibility for past sins, would bend over backward to exhibit excellent ethical leadership.

Has he? Not according to a leading shareholder watchdog. Institutional Shareholder Services said last week that Apotheker’s participation in the appointment of five new directors on Jan. 20 hampered the independence of those members and violated the company’s own rules regarding the independence of board members, the ISS said.

For the record, here’s the response HP gave to Dow Jones: ISS’s recommendation was based on “their misinterpretation of the process that HP employed in identifying, selecting, and nominating our directors.” It would not be in the best interest of HP shareholders to lose experienced and dedicated directors who have “carried out their obligations in a fully compliant manner.”

There you have it: no detailed road map, no answers to critical management questions, and questionable compliance practices. As I said, I’m not going to use the B-word, but I will use the F-word, and that word is “fail,” as in Apotheker failed to convince us that HP is back on track.

I welcome your comments, tips, and suggestions. Post them here so that all our readers can share them, or reach me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net. Follow me on Twitter at BSnyderSF.

This article, “HP’s Apotheker comes up empty,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.