You can do it when the market has clearly responded to the new strategy by absolutely brutalizing your stock price[1], and when investors are in turn suing because the new strategy flies in the face of everything you've been telling them about the company for the past eighteen months.

[1] http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

I mean presumably they discussed this strategy with Apotheker before bringing him on, right? He didn't just go rogue on them? So they approve the plan, bring him on, and then when people don't like it, jettison him as a scapegoat. Which is fine, don't play in the big leagues if you think life's going to be fair. But the board are at fault here.

Yes this is a certainty. No CEO could make a 10 billion dollar acquisition without board approval.

Apotheker going is a good first step, though.

I always thought the new strategy was flawed either way.

On the other hand, its a huge turn for HP to sell off the leader of a segment and try software.

“What the board wants,” he will say, shooting his cuffs, “is a visionary who will have the courage to take strong action.”

“I see,” I will murmur, swirling the dregs of espresso around the bottom of my cup, eying the way the perfect crema lines the exquisite porcelain. “And am I to understand that if my ‘vision’ doesn’t meet with immediate public acclaim or if I can’t restructure the future of the company AND hit immediate sales targets, you’ll be having breakfast with someone else?”

How is this board going to hire anyone capable of making bets if they fire Leo before his bets could pay off? Who would want a job working for people like this? If they didn’t like his moves, they should have exercised governance and let him know what he could and couldn’t do. If they were doing their jobs and they let him make these kinds of moves, they should support him and not throw him under a bus.

How much does it pay? Assuming you are guaranteed a year's salary and that that salary is in the $millions range, it doesn't seem like a total waste of time.

I volunteer myself for this job.

Maybe they expected Apotheker to do more in building the enterprise before he started killing HP's consumer business.

At this point, I'm sure the board would approve it.

http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/why-leo-apotheker-will-be-fi...

He can be a bit of a nutter sometimes but man was this spot on with the Whitman call and Apotheker's hail mary of a huge enterprise acquisition:

"Then there’s Meg Whitman, who expected at this point to have resigned from the HP board to spend all her time running California as governor. But that didn’t happen, so now what is she to do? You can only get so many pedicures. She’ll eventually get around to hip-checking Apotheker and taking his job. Meg can knock back brewskies as well as any man and will probably fill those CEO shoes even better than Apotheker.

I know I am speaking early about this but that’s why I get the big bucks.

There is only one chance Apotheker has to save his job and that’s by buying his old company, SAP. "

HP still brings in a ton of money a year and has a huge market share in several different markets.

It can be fixed, however they have to find someone extraordinary to fix it. Meg Whitman probably isn't quite the right person, she doesn't seem to be the "let's turn this place around" type person.

I love this guy's writing.

FYI - even though he "resigned" from within SAP in Sept 2010, everyone I've spoken to said he was politely asked to leave.

And seriously, after your employer pulls a stunt like that would you go back?

What bothers me is that it doesn't matter how incompetent Apotheker is and how suicidal his decisions at the helm of HP were, he'll leave it with a lot of money.

If we reward failure like this, how can we expect people to make the effort needed to succeed?

http://allthingsd.com/20110921/former-ebay-ceo-meg-whitman-b...