Fiorina the CEO Goes Down Again

Carly stepped on her - well, toe I guess. Poor gal; she’s clearly missing something or other. We know it can't be her brain, she’s smart, never any question about that, maybe her latest observation only goes to prove she's too smart for her own good. Of course I’m talking about her comment today that Palin is not qualified to be CEO of a big corporation.

OK, no problem - so far. Most people would agree with Carly Fiorina at this point. Seems a reasonable comment. Sarah Palin would probably shoot and field-dress half of her staff on their first meeting, and most people would probably agree with that too. Only problem is that Fiorini was considered a likely vice-presidential candidate to run with John McCain before he picked Palin. So, most people smiled, attributed it to sour grapes, yawned and turned the page.

But then. Fiorini “clarified” her comment. To show she bore no ill will against Palin, since they are in the same political party, she added that John McCain was not qualified to be a CEO of a big corporation either. She then added that Barrack Obama and Joe Biden couldn’t run a big corporation either. Of course, Carly Fiorina’s last job (before she was fired) was the CEO of Hewlett Packard.

Theoretically, there should be little difference between being CEO of any large corporation, a state, a church or a nation. All these people, after all, are Chief Executive Officers. They all are presiding officers who have staffs - accountants, finance people, lawyers, administrators, advertisers, and operational personnel who each have leaders who meet regularly with the CEO to provide advice, ask questions, give and receive briefings. This is the old (and now discredited) “McNamara Doctrine”. McNamara’s error was in not understanding that the Operational People have to be the ones who provide the critical guidance. It DOES make a difference whether it is the Ford Motor Company, the Catholic Church or the DOD.

But where McNamara, Fiorina, and all the others who contribute to this mess are on shaky ground is that they seem to be making the assumption that the CEO actually does run the organization. Most organizations I have seen, governmental or commercial, choose a “CEO” as someone who can "appear" to lead the organization. The CEO may even believe that he or she is really “the decider”, but that is only because they have been told that they are. Actually, the strings of power are pulled by people who are not “presidential” enough for public scrutiny - no one would ever vote for or select a person like that (Rove, e.g.). As long as the CEO does what he or she is "supposed" to do, they are kept in power, preened and paraded. If they won’t play their role they get booted. They can be fired, even killed, or simply left to rot in office as the action moves on.