Tough Choices: A Memoir

by Carly Fiorina

Book Overview

The New York Times bestseller by the most talked about woman in American business. For five and a half years, Carly Fiorina led Hewlett-Packard through major internal changes, the worst technology... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159184133X
• ISBN13: 9781591841333
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Portfolio
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Valuable as an insight to the challenges of a CEO, though just one side of the coin

On the one hand, I consider this a must-read for those considering a business career, although it needs to be balanced by also reading the viewpoints of those who opposed Carly Fiorina. There is still much in this book of value. One will gain realization of the importance of a wide and diversified education, of self-conficence, of openess to change.The greatet value of the book, however, is the insight one gains into the personality and thinking of the author. The greatest caution is to realize that her perception is not the only possible point of view.Personally, I found Carly Fiona to be a lady to be admired on one level, that of intellect and skill. However, I also got glimpses of a flawed person. I know of no human without flaws (including myself). I am not the least bit sure that I would have desired her as an employer. Certainly, there would have been times that I would have felt uncomfortable as an employee.Therefore, I found this to be an immensely valuable book to read, but not one to be considered as written in stone.As a last comment, those who just do not have the patience and interest to read the book carefully from beginning-to-end may do well to start around the middle, say with chapter 18, in order to get the crux of the material and then skim at will through the earlier portion.

Nearly destroyed HP but still walked away with $21 million. Impressive.

In this remarkable autobiography, Fiorina explains how she made her way to the top of the corporate ladder through sheer self-confidence and power suits, and nothing else. Her rapid advancement within ATT from management trainee to Senior Vice President is truly inspirational. She obviously had the requisite fire in her belly to do it. That, and the foresight to marry a high level ATT executive. She candidly writes about her complete ignorance of what Hewlett Packard's business was and how this ignorance led her to make some terrible decisions that led to the largest layoffs and largest decline in market value in HP's history. Yet even with her colossaly incompetent management of the company, she managed to leave her position with a record $21 million dollar termination package. Even more impressive was Fiorina's ability to perpetuate her image as a successful corporate leader, appearing in endless TV interviews as an expert in business and economics. The book was written before her short and tragic stint as McCain's ecomomic advisor. But it is useful to note that she screwed that up too by saying that neither McCain, nor any of the other cadidates were competent to run a company. She also publicly said that it was unfair that insurance companies cover Viagra, but they don't cover birth control for women, which put McCain in an awkward spot. But she still manages to show up on FOX TV as a well dressed expert on the economy. I once saw her talking about the evils of incompetent CEO's reaping millions while they destroy their companies and wipe out the jobs of hard working Americans and she didn't once display a hint of irony under that McCaulay Culkin do. Fiorina has truly achieved the American dream. Her story should be an inspiration to us all.

An intriguing and well written memoir of Hewlett-Packard's first woman CEO.

Having worked at a Cambridge based business school for a little over seven years as an administrative assistant, the story of Carly Fiorina really caught my interest, because I was curious about the gender dynamics and or biases in the business world, if indeed there really were and are any. But according to Fiorina's intepretative slant, there are. To a certain extent, I believe her; she was a controversal CEO, and in reading some of the reviews, there do seem to be some people who have an axe to grind in regards to her leadership, especially in HP's acquisition of Compaq, among some other happenings. With a background in medieval history and philosophy, one would not think that that would be a stable foundation for a life in business, but it was always her obedience to her parents and those around her that prevented her from flourishing into what she ultimately became, and I think that is ultimately what Fiorina's core message is to her readers, that people have to follow their own instincts. People can not always follow the path that others have laid out for them, no matter how good intentioned it may be. The person's individual instincts must come first. Yet with the judgements and bickering aside, Tough Choices is actually a good memoir and very well written, lucid, direct and not overdone with protective hyperbole; the memoir is not suggestive of a pity party or a woman who is trying to find redemption through all the chaos of criticism. What was really conveyed was how Carly Fiorina rose through the ranks to become the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in the first place. She gives illuminating details of her various stints at AT & T, Lucent Technologies and all the various offshoots until she was recruited by HP. She also details her family life, her numerous trips abroad (the meeting in Japan with the assigned geisha brought a smile to my face), to the various firings she had to commit to in order to see the industry through. And there are those moments where she writes about her encounters with sexism. They were not indicative of the companies that she worked for, just certain people who unfortunately did not know any better. That may sound weak, but it is true nonetheless. Overall, Tough Choices was a fine read, and I learned something from it. When a person is in a position of authority, irrelevant of gender, not everybody is going to be pleased. Sometimes it is just what is best for the company? CEOs have to look down the road, not at just the moment, and Carly Fiorina did that, to the best of her ability until the Board decided that new leadership needed to be gleaned from a pool of likeminded candidates. Lastly, I would not take the totality of Tough Choices as one hundred percent truth, as memoirs and autobiographies can always be manipulated so only one side is conveyed. I am sure there were plenty of screw-ups that were not acknowledged, but as a basic memoir, Tough Choices was a worthwhile read.

FANTASTIC book!

Carly is truly an inspiration- and a talented writer! I enjoyed reading about her story on how she got to where she is in life, and she has alot of funny anecdotes and stories mixed among some amazing insightful advice to keep it all interesting.

A Female Executive in the Technology World

It is a well-written book about a female Executive in the technology world, who climbed the ladder in technology sector with hard-work, tenacity, risk taking and high intellect (ironically, with little or no understanding of technology). Carly may have made big mistakes during her tenure at HP as a CEO, but the book is not about HP and not about her failures in HP, it is about an Executive who made it there with painstaking effort in every step of her career. The book is extremely detailed to a point where it is like a management guidebook for those who are managers or want to be a manager one day. The later parts of the book on her HP career is particularly interesting for those who are curious about the boardroom dynamics of large corporations and the challenges that a CEO face as a board member. I would have loved to see more in her book on her personal life. She omitted those humanly aspects of living a normal family life as she dived into details of her AT & T, Lucent and HP careers and left aside the rest of her life. I highly recommend this book particularly to women in the technology sector since there is so much to learn from her. I really enjoyed reading this book from the first page to the last.