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Buried in Quilts
Alaska Gray
Fare Play
Blood Sympathy
3rd Culprit: An Annual of Crime Stories
A Dangerous Thing (Worldwide Mystery)
Painted Truth
Bird in a Cage
A Permanent Retirement: A Laura Michaels Mystery
Until the End of Time
Dust Devils of the Purple Sage
Family Practice
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Genealogy of Murder
Meadowlark
A Bleeding of Innocents
Cyberkiss
Rotten Apples
The Girl with the Phony Name
Just the Fax, Ma'Am
The Girl Who Remembered Snow
A Taste for Burning
Until It Hurts (Worldwide Library Mysteries)
Malarkey (Wwl Mystery , No 275)

Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead

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Smashing those unchallenged assumptions about appraisal.
The side effects can kill the method
Great Starting Point
Good and bad
Finally! Performance for the 21st Century!

Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead
Tom Coens , and Mary Jenkins
Manufacturer: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Stress-Free Performance Appraisals: Turn Your Most Painful Management Duty into a Powerful Motivational Tool
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Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes

ASIN: 1576752003

Book Description

This is the first book to offer specific suggestions on how to replace performance appraisals with a more effective system that emphasizes teamwork and empowerment. Feedback, compensation, coaching, promotion, and legal documentation are all covered, as well as a variety of new alternatives that produce better results for both managers and employees.

Customer Reviews:

Smashing those unchallenged assumptions about appraisal........2007-03-02

If you grapple with performance appraisal, then it might be worth thinking through the assumptions that you have built your performance appraisal system upon. And that's how Tom and Mary's book can help. They describe a series of assumptions that most performance appraisal systems are based on, and they offer up some more useful (and more reality-based) assumptions that provide the foundations for a more effective alternative (not an improvement - a completely different concept altogether).

Even if you aren't convinced to let go of traditional performance appraisal methods, you will still glean some valuable pearls from this book, that can help with problems you're currently having with appraisal.

The side effects can kill the method.......2006-10-24

Get past the title, and the authors' "we are totally right" style, and you'll find good material in here. "This book is about ... choos[ing] ... the most effective ways of working with people, [and] refocusing on outstanding organizational performance."

It tells you why most formal appraisal systems have a lot of good goals, but the negative side-effects of trying to reach them through a regular, compulsory, recorded system prevent most people from reaching them. Suggests abolishing the single system, reviewing the goals, and setting up multiple voluntary systems to do the job better.

Read this book to remind yourself what real personal and group improvement communication is about, so that you can include it in your daily work.

Great Starting Point.......2005-10-06

I seached out this book when I was tasked to be part of creation of a review process for my smallish company. "Abolishing Performance Appraisals" operated as a great resource during the process.

Especially helpful were the case studies, which pointed out how real companies were creating alternatives to clunky performance appraisals.

Good and bad.......2004-05-15

Extensive research, good case studies, knowledgeble discussion of legal issues are strengths of this book. However, there are numerous weaknesses:
1 Linking enlightened management directly to ineffective appraisal systems. They are not nedessarily related.
2 Not acknowledging managers insight on employees performance.
3 Assuming apprasials are generally a high corporate priority compared with other management activities.
4 Not recommending one or two focused appraisal functions as an alternative to no appraisals.
5 Not providing an explaination of how to administer most pay raise systems (Hay for example).
6 Not clearly identifying how the rating drives pay, promotion and bonus. An alternative is required.
7 Not disussing how requirements may vary by industry job specifics or the impact of enviromental factors, such as, confidentiality and raises based on senioity. jrj

Finally! Performance for the 21st Century!.......2002-07-03

If you've ever received a traditional performance appraisal (PA), every word of this book will ring true! The sad part is, in a country as technically advanced as the US, this same process has been used in corporations since World War II. Can you name another technology still in use from that era?

As a Performance Management consultant I've reengineered appraisal systems based on employee and management needs, so the book's title put me off initially. Performance mesurement and feedback is critical in a high performing organization. But the authors' approach is right on target. Organizations should NOT stop measuring, but measure and feed back accurately within an adult-to-adult context. The data on how humans behave puts traditional PA systems to shame. What a waste of resources!

Performance Management systems can be reengineered at little direct cost and return REAL individual, group and organizational performance improvement. I've found that nearly all PA systems are compensation rather than performance focused, and actually keep employees from the accountability the organization seeks. What's worse, these systems are often the only source for employee feedback!

Coens and Jenkins capture and dispel all the well-meaning assumptions of traditional Performance Appraisals, while also providing solid PERFORMANCE-BASED alternatives. For example, and with no apologies to the lawyers, individual performance documentation is only needed when there is a serious performance problem, and that is quite rare. Positive performance data is available in other, more productive ways. Why burden the entire organization, demotivate employees, and waste valuable resources when treating adults as adults can actually improve BOTTOM LINE PERFORMNACE?

The book is not for everyone, but managers who have always felt sick about using their company's PA process will be delighted to know that they were right all along. People know how to do this, and company bureaucracy just gets in the way.

No business has extra people or money. I've effectively used these same principles for years. Thank you, Tom and Mary, for documenting a process for 21st century Performance Management.

Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did

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Backfire
Too bad it didn't get read by our leaders
Hard book to put down
Excellent critque of US imperialism
Powerful and provocative analysis of the U.S. role in Vietna

Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did
Loren Baritz
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801859530

Book Description

"The first full-length and scholarly account of why we got into Vietnam in the first place, why we fought as barbarously as the Japanese in Manchuria or the Germans in Poland, and why we deserved to lose it -- indeed why we did have to lose it if we were to find any kind of ultimate peace." -- Henry Steele Commager, Amherst College

"A provocative and informative book written in the easy style of a seasoned teacher. One must wonder what might have been had Backfire been written two decades earlier." -- Paul Bucha, Medal of Honor, Vietnam

"This remarkable book provides a way of looking at the Vietnam War that is both intellectually complex and extremely moving." -- Susan Sontag

In a probing look at the myths of American culture that led us into the Vietnam quagmire, Loren Baritz exposes our national illusions: the conviction of our moral supremacy, our assumption that Americans are more idealistic than other people, and our faith in a technology that supposedly makes us invincible. He also reveals how Vietnam changed American culture today, from the successes and failures of the Washington bureaucracy to the destruction of the traditional military code of honor.

"Baritz reminds us of how confident we were in America's invincibility during those pre-Vietnam War days. He looks closely into 'the invention of South Vietnam' during the Kennedy years, and he examines the body counting war at home--the bureaucratic and psychological effort to convince ourselves that we were winning, and would surely win. Backfire reveals brilliantly why the lessons of Vietnam are so difficult to learn," -- Martin J. Sherwin, History Book Club

Customer Reviews:

Backfire.......2006-01-21

John Sweet
Book review #3

Baritz, Loren. Back Fire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did. Baltimore: The John's Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Loren Baritz takes a look at the Vietnam War in a way that lets us understand why we decided to fight and why we fought the way we did. Unlike most surveys of the war that focus on the logistical elements and command decisions which explain what the war was Baritz explains why it was. "To understand our present role in the world" Baritz explains, "we must understand the Vietnam debacle." (p.9) Indeed, if we are to learn anything from our mistakes, and virtually everyone now agrees that Vietnam was a mistake, it is essential to know why something happened and not just what happened. To explain why Vietnam happened the way it did Baritz proposes that there is "an inherent connection between war and culture [that is] present in all nations." In our case, Vietnam was fought the way it was because our culture left us no other way to fight it.
Baritz divides the book up into three parts. The first part, Tinder, explains why America decided to fight in Vietnam and the myths that forced us to make war half way around the globe with a people that we did not understand. The second part, Fire, explains how we fell into an ever deeper war in Vietnam and how our means of fighting determined how we fought and why we were unable to effectively combat a vastly inferior military force. The third part, Backfire, is the most telling part of the book for it presents an explanation of how our culture forced us to fight the way we did, why we ultimately lost, and why we are still making the same mistakes today.
In Tinder, Baritz convinces us that Americans firmly believe that we are the best. We are a "chosen people" inhabiting a "city on a hill" doing "Gods work" bringing a "Great Society to Asia." Such blatant solipsism is part of our entrenched American dogma. So ingrained is this self righteousness that we truly can not comprehend someone who does not wish to be like us. One GI put it simply "The Vietnamese are so stupid that they can't understand a great people were trying to help a weak people." So it was, as Baritz explains, that Gods Country went to Vietnam to save them.
Our almost total ignorance of the Vietnamese culture is now legendary but at the time it did not seem important. Our sense of righteousness and invincibility was so complete that we never even considered the possibility that we were the real enemy to the South Vietnamese. One of the greatest blunders of the Vietnam War was the refusal to see the indigenous forces of the South as the main target. Instead, we assumed that the North was behind our failures to win the hearts and minds of the "backwards" South Vietnamese. Baritz is careful to explain that all nations have myths about their own greatness, but it is when these myths of inherent superiority are combined with power that terrible things happen. As was the case for us in Vietnam. Indeed, Baritz's book is now routinely quoted to expose the similarities between Vietnam and Iraq in an attempt to put the brakes on what is turning out to be a similar debacle.
Our moral superiority has often been derived by our technical superiority according to Baritz. Our obsession with the power of technology is absolute. It has been, and is today, the firm belief of most Americans that technology is the answer for most problems. This dependency on technological solutions, according to Baritz, blinded us to the proper response in Vietnam which was counterinsurgency. To truly win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, intelligence and human interaction, practiced on a national scale might have handed the US a victory. But such a strategy offered no stage to display our superior technology. Even when our use of technology was obviously not working the Army responded in a typically American way. "When something failed to work we did more of it."(p.233) While such insanity is self-evident today, at the time it was perversely logical to the American generals who were so caught up in their own myths that to do otherwise would be tantamount to admitting the entire American way of life was wrong. After reading Backfire the belief in American military strategy as an extension of what is essential about America is not such a slippery slope. Baritz is very convincing connecting American culture to the way we fight. We are a technological nation and, more than anyone, dream of winning wars by the push of a button. "Shock and Awe," "smart bombs," and "stealth" are all extensions of our desire to separate us from harm and have the wonders of American ingenuity save the day. In Vietnam, as well as in the war on terror, where there is no front line intelligence gained from good foot soldiers and not bigger and better missiles are the deciding factors in achieving victory.
If all of this is so clear now why do we continue to make the same mistakes? In the third part, Backfire, Baritz explains that we have no choice. We fight the way we do because our culture defines who we are and how we fight. As long as our culture remains the same we will continue to be more efficient in our fighting but no more effective. This is because we are prisoners of our faith in technology. In order to maintain a high tech society the functioning of government, business, and the military must reside in a bureaucracy. As Baritz explains "when the technological mind is turned to the problem of organizing human activity, the result is bureaucracy." (p.48)
Baritz demonetization of the effects of bureaucracy on the military is total. With clarity and logic he explains how the fighting of such a technological war necessitated the bureaucisation of the military and its tragic consequences. The most damning of the outcomes is the development of careerism within the officer corps. The shift of officers from "leaders to managers" created such hazards as a drop in morale, insubordination, lack of responsibility, lack of experience, and unimaginative tactics. When officers are working to "get ahead" the job takes precedence over the mission and the mission suffers as it did in Vietnam.
The combination of bureaucracy and technology in Vietnam led to the eventual, extreme conclusion in strategy, that of having no strategy; the body count. When killing becomes and end unto itself the morality of war breaks down quickly. War becomes cold and passionless. Baritz correctly finds fault with such thinking claiming that "passion is an appropriate response to war." Without passion and debate the bureaucratic ship will be on autopilot. Incidences such as My Lai are the tragic results.
Did we learn from Vietnam? Baritz claims that "one antidote for folly is experience" and the experiences of Vietnam should have cast our invincibility myth into the ashcan as well as our reliance on technology as a panacea. Yet, it seems that the lessons of history are nothing in comparison to the American Myth that we are a city on a hill. Ronald Reagan against the Soviets, Clinton against the third world and the Bush Doctrine of preventive strikes and the forced spread of democracy all have repeated some of the mistakes that we made in Vietnam.
Baritz concludes that "our power, complacency, rigidity, and ignorance have kept us from incorporating our Vietnam experience into the way we think about ourselves and the world." (p.349) To fight a different, more humane, more effective war, will require more than a change in the military structure but a change in American cultural thinking. Looking at the current global policy of the United States, this does seem likely to happen any time soon and so we will continue to fight the way we do: with a national myth that shows us that we are good, with technology that makes us strong, and a bureaucracy that gives us standard operating procedures. Unfortunately, it has proven not to be a winning combination.

Too bad it didn't get read by our leaders.......2004-11-10

I can't add to the description of the book, except to say that it's too bad more people haven't read it. Especially our leadership. It's horrendously important to recognize the failures that we're repeating in Iraq.

Hard book to put down.......2004-01-27

This is a remarkable book that I found very hard to put down. If you are interested in discovering why we went to war, and how we lost it, Backfire if for you. The author avoids the usual mantra of both the left and the right and gives us what may be the most comprehensive analysis of this war written to date. Although I will take issue with some of the authors assumptions, this book should be must reading for the politicians and military who wage war, and for parents who send their children to fight wars.

It is difficult to find fault with the author's contentions that we fought the wrong war. Our enemy fought a political and psychological war, a war against American culture; whereas we fought a conventional war and were trapped by our own cultural assumptions of American invincibility. It is the author premise that American foreign policy was, and is, driven by our cultural myth of America as the City on a Hill. Baritz observes that as Americans we see ourselves as the new Israel, God's chosen people. The author contends that because of this myth the American people see themselves as a moral example to the world, Baritz wrote: It means that we are a Chosen People, each of whom, because of Gods favor and presence, can smite one hundred of our heathen enemies hip and thigh. . . . We believe that the people of the world really want to be like us, regardless of what they or their political leaders say. So Baritz takes the Ugly American approach to our foreign policy.

In a sense, he is right. Our belief in our own invincibility, and that the Vietnamese people wanted to be like us and welcome us drove the war. It was inconceivable to us that they would not share our values, applaud our intentions or embrace our presence. It led us to trust in our guns and to our failure to state our national objectives for this war.

Here are a few of the remarkable insights the author gives us:
There was a tendency for American war planners and policy makers to think the job was done when their plans and policies were approved, leaving no one to monitor whether or not what they decided was effective. He points out that we supported a regime that had little popular support and our conventional military tactics made the problem worse because bombing, artillery, napalm and Agent Orange would wound and kill the very people whose support we needed. After Tet, the Viet Cong insurgency was defeated and the Phoenix program of the assassination of Viet Cong leaders had decimated the leadership of the Viet Cong. By 1970 General Giap had concluded the only way the North could win the war was through regular war, the very kind of big-unit engagement American Generals had hoped for. But by this time, the political war at home was lost. Yes, the press was partially to blame for our defeat. The constant stream of defeatism by the Press, especially during and after the Tet offensive cannot be underestimated in turning American opinion against the war.

Baritz takes issue with the claim that the war could have been won if the military had been allowed to fight it differently. Not because we could not win, but because the American culture at the time precluded such a victory. Vietnam was not perceived as a threat to American, there was no anger in the American public to support such a war. In the end, the North Vietnamese understood American culture, they believed they could win if they did not lose. All they had to do was to outlast American patience. The Americans war leaders believed that they would lose if they did not win. The failure to achieve quick and decisive victory doomed the American war effort.

Has the America changed? Are we now willing to do what we were incapable of doing in the 1960's? that is to wage an effective war? Or has the American public, like that of ancient Rome as the barbarians gathered on their frontiers, grown tired of defending its freedom? Only time will tell.

Excellent critque of US imperialism.......2001-08-05

NATO's assault on Yugoslavia is remarkably similar to the USA's war of aggression against Vietnam. Loren Baritz's excellent book Backfire: a history of how American culture led us into Vietnam and made us fight the way we did, (Morrow, 1985) presents the US Government's pattern of thought, in some detail. The McGeorge Bundy report of February 1965 "concluded by informing the president that if he kept his focus on what the NLF was doing in the South as the cause of our bombing in the north, the world's criticism of the bombing could be dealt with. If the American players would continually emphasize the atrocities of the guerrillas, `the international pressures for negotiation should be quite manageable.' America must not get sucked into negotiations for peace except for what amounted to an unconditional surrender of the guerrillas." "While he (President Johnson) was destroying the country with bombing, defoliation and napalm, he could without cynicism speak of peace and progress. He believed that the destruction was unfortunately necessary before the construction could occur. That was Ho Chi Minh's fault." "During the debate about whether the United States should send its bombers to help the French at Dien Bien Phu, the Chief of Staff of the army, General Matthew B. Ridgway, recalled that in Korea, where he had been in command, `We had learned that air and naval power alone cannot win a war ... It was incredible to me that we had forgotten that bitter lesson so soon - that we were on the verge of making that same tragic error.' The lesson we had learned in World War II was forgotten before it was relearned in Korea, and was forgotten again in Vietnam. Old myths apparently neither die nor fade away. Before America withdrew from Vietnam, we dropped four times more bombs on Vietnam than all the bombs we dropped all over the world during World War II. It did not work, as the CIA regularly said it would not." "LBJ had received the advice to start the air war to prevent the ground war." But a failed air war provoked pressure for a ground war. "The decision to send in the marines was based on the assumption that they would serve only `security', not combat, objectives. The war planners did not have to admit to themselves that they were in an Asian ground war. The President did not inform the American public about the decision to send the marines when he had the opportunity to do so. America soon learned what was happening, and Secretary Rusk explained, if that is the right word, that the marines were ordered to avoid combat, only to return enemy fire." Paul Warnke, the appropriately-named Pentagon hack, said, "There is no question of the fact that we can keep on winning the war forever. We always win and we always will, and it won't ever make any difference. Our wins won't make a clear dent because there is no way in which we can bring about political progress in South Vietnam. ... The more of an American occupation you engage in the longer you're going to stay." "Guerrillas do not need to win; they simply must avoid losing. Conventional forces must win. Guerrillas can wait for the expense of foreign expeditionary forces to wear down the enemy's economy, and for the accumulating casualties to enrage the home front. Guerrillas are at home to start with. They never need to fight set battles unless they choose to. Because they can wait, time is on their side and is therefore a test of the enemy's patience and will in a distant land." "General Westmoreland's `strategy' was to fight a `war of attrition', to kill as many guerrillas and North Vietnamese troops as possible. Then they would quit. Then we would win. The killing became the objective. General Westmoreland did not know what else to do: `What alternative was there to a war of attrition?'" But, as a standard military textbook said, "Attrition is not a strategy."

Powerful and provocative analysis of the U.S. role in Vietna.......2000-05-13

The subtitle of "Backfire" - "A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We did" - sums up the contents well. But it fails to suggest the great evil and ignorance which Baritz's scholarly analysis reveals. Example: G.I.s spent a full year in Vietnam; officers were rotated in and out every six months. Reason: Officers needed to "punch their tickets" (i.e. serve in Vietnam) if they wanted to rise up the ladder of promotion. So military policy was formulated based on that priority, not on the obvious fact that just as officers were becoming really experienced combat leaders, they were sent home and replaced by inexperienced officers. The resulting cost of American lives amounts to a war crime on the part of senior military leaders who put the policy into effect, a war crime against their own men! Another example: U.S. soldiers derided Vietnamese men as "fags" because they saw them holding hands. They were ignorant of Vietnamese culture in which such conduct has nothing to do with sexual preference. Thus, "why fight for a bunch of fags" became a prevalent attitude. Baritz's book is different than almost any other on Vietnam - and more thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Tupelov Tu-22 'Blinder' Tu-22M 'Backfire' (Aerofax Series)

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Should have been Beauty

Tupelov Tu-22 'Blinder' Tu-22M 'Backfire' (Aerofax Series)
Gordon/Rigmont
Manufacturer: Midland
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1857800656

Book Description

Prior to the development of the Tu-22, NATO planners had long feared the idea of the Soviets developing a long-range supersonic nuclear bomber. The Tu-22 'Blinder' never really gave the USSR what they were looking for but Tu-22M 'Backfire' did! This information-packed volume reveals Soviet tactics for destroying NATO warships using 'Blinders', and its use by Libya and Iraq.

Customer Reviews:

Should have been Beauty.......2003-06-28

For the aviation enthusiast the end of the Cold War was a time of mixed emotions, OK, the west had won, less threat of nuclear war, but so many neat projects died, planes scrapped etc. On the other hand we were suddenly able to find a lot more about those exotic shapes from behind the curtain.
This publication gives a typically Aerofax detail on two intriguing shapes, Samolet 105 Tu-22 Blinder (NATO reporting name was originally Beauty and most apt too, but was felt to be over complementary). Similar in timescale to Convair's amazing B-58 Hustler, the Tu-22 was always more of a tactical than a strategic system. The first half details the Tu-22's evolution from supersonic level bomber to missile launcher to recon / ecm platform. Fascinating aircraft, and the front view showes why the pilots nicknamed it the "Awl"
The second section traces how the swing wing Tu-22M arose as a 2nd generation Tu-22, and why the changes were made.
Many excellent detail shots for modellers, and the ESCI kits will be reissued sometime. This is all the reference you will need on these types (to date at least. Definative.

Average customer rating:

Read it and weep
An upsetting, but great work of history.
The most insightful book ever written about the Vietnam war

Backfire
Loren Baritz
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0345331214
Release Date: 1986-04-12

Customer Reviews:

Read it and weep.......2006-10-01

It won't be fun.

And even less fun is the fact that someone will rewrite the whole book a few years from now--not about VietNam but about South Asia.

Oh, yes, and after you're finished give it to someone who thinks that if the Army--or the Marines--could have won that war if only they could have done what they wanted to.

An upsetting, but great work of history........1999-04-09

This book upset me greatly. Not because it was terribly gruesome. Not because I was told of some horrible acts of brutality. It upset me because Mr. Baritz shows how our goverment, and the bureaucracy that supports it, screwed over thousands of young men who died fighting a futile war. Though I was upset after finishing the book, I am glad that I read it. Anyone who grew up after the Vietnam War and wishes to know what the heck happened, Backfire is a necessary read.

The most insightful book ever written about the Vietnam war.......1998-01-16

A book that explains how and why the U.S lost the Vietnam war. It also gives an insight to the erroneous world view and perception of America's decisionmakers (especially in the executive branch of government),vis-a-vis thir world countries. They consistently hedged their bets on the wrong horses by supporting "right wing" tyranical regimes, often alienating genuine democratic movements,hence enabling the long reigns of the Mobutus,and the Pinochets of this world.Loren Baritz clearly explains how America's messianic approach to foreign policy in Vietnam (and other independence seeking third world countries) literally "back-fired", culminating in the reverberating cries of "yankee go home!" of the 50's and 60's. Certainly a "must read" for every American college student and foreign policy official, if the U.S is to learn anything from the carnage that was the Vietnam war!

Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard

Average customer rating:

OK intro to HP, but stops short
You will understand why she raised to the top and ...fell!
CEO impact on lower-level managers needed in book
Computer server business assessment needed in book
Insightful!

Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard
Peter Burrows
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0471267651

Book Description

An insider's look at the internal turmoil at one of the world's premier high-tech companies
This is the inside story of Hewlett-Packard Company's struggle to regain its former glory, and of the high-stakes battle between CEO Carly Fiorina and family scion Walter Hewlett over how best to achieve that goal. For decades, HP was admired not only for its innovative products and soaring stock price, but for its egalitarian corporate culture and father-knows-best integrity. Backfire explains how the company fell on hard times, recounts the historic decision that made Fiorina the world's top-ranking female executive, and brings to life the backlash that resulted when she tried to impose her charismatic salesmanship on the aging icon. Top BusinessWeek journalist Peter Burrows gives the dramatic blow-by-blow of Hewlett's effort to kill Fiorina's most controversial move of all, her $19 billion purchase of rival Compaq Computer. Fiorina won by a whisker, after the most expensive proxy fight in history and a dramatic lawsuit that accused the company of illegally fixing the vote. This gripping, ongoing story includes fascinating personalities and dramatic boardroom and courtroom drama.
Peter Burrows (Alameda, CA) has been a technology reporter for BusinessWeek for nine years and has covered the HP saga from the start. The department editor for BusinessWeek's computer coverage, he has been the principal chronicler of Fiorina's tenure at HP, and has written three cover stories on the subject. He has also written numerous other cover stories, including looks at Steve Jobs's Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy.

Customer Reviews:

OK intro to HP, but stops short.......2006-05-10

HP is a company in transition. For decades one of the fastest growing companies in history, it is now seen as a beleaguered giant, risk averse and unable to transform itself.

This book situates the company's crisis in the context of the ascension of Carly Fiorina to the position of CEO and her brutal fight to acquire Compaq while changing the company.

The origins of Hewlett-Packard have become the stuff of legend. During an electrical engineering class at Stanford in 1934, Bill Hewlett and David Packard began to formulate a vision for a company; their professor, Fred Terman, immediately recognized their talent and set about to mentor them. Four years later, in a rented garage with just $538, Hewlett and Packard, flipping a coin to decide whose name would come first, founded Hewlett-Packard. From the start, HP strove to create innovative technology products, predominantly in the instrumentation and measurement field. Their first big break came with the Disney company's purchase of an audio oscillator, which it used to fine tune the sound track for the experimental music film Fantasia. As the company grew, the founders articulated a series of objectives ("the HP Way"), which included the necessity to make a profit with a focus on innovation in the electronics field, but also an egalitarian culture that emphasized employee profit-sharing, career opportunities, and a contribution to the community.

According to many employees, the HP Way helped to create an exceptional work environment, in which individual opinions mattered and strong personal relationships of trust grew along with professional engagement. Many HP employees spent their entire careers at the company. According to David Packard, HP sought to balance entrepreneurship against insubordination: if an employee chose to continue to develop a product on his own after it was officially terminated, he often would be allowed to do so within limits. Time and again, Packard found, such entrepreneurship resulted in breakthrough instruments, such as oscillator viewer screens, that generated millions of dollars in revenues. To maintain this entrepreneurial spirit, as profitable groups grew within HP they were allowed to function as near-autonomous divisions. This was particularly well suited to the booming electronic instrument business: with a few hundred thousand dollars, a small group could develop a product for a unique area of need and then sell it on their own. For decades, this structure worked. From 1958 to 1998, the company grew an average of 20.2 percent per year, a record that no other company has surpassed.

As Burrows relates, during the late 1960s, HP began to develop computers and related product lines and technologies. This represented a major departure for the company, away from its core business of electronic instrumentation. While the move opened huge new areas of potential profit - from printers and personal computers to pocket calculators and specialized semiconductor processors - it vastly increased the complexity of the company. Not only did R&D often require millions of dollars over decades to develop competitive product lines, but by the end of the 1990s there were over 80 quasi-independent businesses under the HP umbrella; often operating in separate geographical regions, each of these groups had its own sales force, its own engineers and designers, and its own software developers. By 1997, when HP began to miss its financial targets for the first time, many in the company began to fear that it was losing its way, that its structure had become wasteful, unwieldy, and worst of all, risk averse. Furthermore, after having invested so heavily in computers, HP executives recognized that the industry was becoming increasingly commoditized. In the opinion of industry observers, the moment had arrived to shake up the company.

After a few attempts to transform the company from within, the HP board chose Carly Fiorina as the new CEO in 1999, an acknowledged high tech "rock star" who recently had headed sales at Lucent, the communications hardware giant that had spun off from the AT&T breakup. From the start, she was a controversial presence in the company. For example, her specialty was marketing, which automatically branded her as an outsider in an engineering company. Moreover, as a media darling, the personal publicity she attracted made many longtime HP executives uncomfortable. However, others argued that she was bringing a fresh perspective on where the company should go, that she could gain an overview that few insiders had and would formulate a new strategic direction. In particular, Fiorina argued that with the unmatched breadth of its product lines, HP might somehow combine them into a more coherent whole, perhaps by focusing on the internet. Nonetheless, this vision of strategic synthesis remained to be defined in detail.

So far so good. This background was extremely useful for me and covers to about 2004. But from this point, Burrows goes into excruciating detail about Fiorina's personality and style as well as adds several chapters on the civil war within the company that the acquisition of Compaq sparked. None of that interested me much, though this is the "intrigue" that many readers found most interesting. Then, the book ends as she obtains the acquisition, well short of the aftermath in which she was fired. So in addition to being too gossipy for me, it is already outdated.

Burrows is a good journalist and covers a lot here in a better way than I have found elsewhere, but it is not very deep and glosses over many of the others issues that Fiorina was concerned about, such as the creation of synergies between the 83 largely independent businesses that make up the company.

Recommended tepidly.

You will understand why she raised to the top and ...fell!.......2005-09-16

This book will give you some good understanding how Carly Fiorina got the top job at HP and how she reingineered the company before falling into disgrace after the merger with Compaq.

CEO impact on lower-level managers needed in book.......2004-08-05

This book contained a lot of good material concerning the interaction of Carly Fiorina and her highest-level executives. However, Burrows' coverage of her impact on lower level managers in critical positions was inadequate. The failures of such managers can have major impacts on HP for potentially decades and thus deserve scrutiny. A good example prior to the Fiorina era was when HP lost over 60 points of market share in the technical workstation market in the 1980s which also led over time to a weakened server market position, due to lost technical and financial leverage. The current value of this loss may be as high as 10 billion dollars in revenue yearly.

The keynote address by her Vice President for Linux at LinuxWorld yesterday illustrated well the huge risks HP is taking by having lower level executives like this VP adopt her approach. While this area is currently too small to register on the Board of Director's radar, critical market battles are currently being fought that will strongly influence HP financials for a long time. Carly Fiorina's bad influence was evident in VP Martin Fink's keynote address. This speech spent a lot of time promoting Linux, which customers can buy from many vendors, and virtually no time promoting HP's value-added. HP makes money whether it sells Linux or Windows-based machines. There is no real incentive to for HP to sell an HP-Linux machine instead of an HP-Windows machine, or vice versa.
Why is HP's Martin Fink wasting valuable time in front of a huge audience promoting one side of an issue that is a don't care situation (with respect to Windows) and potentially a losing proposition (with respect to HP_UX) to HP financially? Note that HP has no time to waste in this market, the market leader at present, due to earlier HP missteps, is Dell Computer, not HP.

What Martin Fink should have been promoting is why customers should buy HP Linux systems as opposed to IBM or Dell Linux systems, instead of arguing customers should buy Linux instead of other alternatives that HP also makes. Martin Fink's mistake yesterday is a typical Carly mistake, to get caught up in promoting what is fashionable, rather than what is best for HP. The lack of loyalty to HP implicit in his address has also been a familiar issue to Carly observers - that she is promoting herself far more than she promotes HP.

The central theme of this example, the appalling deviation from business basics that Carly inspires in her team, is one that was deserving of much more attention in Burrows book. Corporate marketing resources need to be focussed on beating the competition, not on taking market share from one HP division and transferring it to another, or promoting the next job for some executive, whether that executive is Fink or Fiorina. It seemed yesterday that Martin Fink was promoting himself for some more senior Linux position at some other firm, which would explain his lack of HP advocacy, something Fiorina is thought to do in promoting herself for political office using her HP soapbox. It is also a good demonstration why the point of view prevalent on some unengaged Boards, that a CEO as just a public relations representative is adequate, is so misguided.

Computer server business assessment needed in book.......2004-06-20

I enjoyed this book as it contained substantial original reporting that is not duplicative of the work that others have done. I would have liked to see more material concerning bottom line issues. The bottom line issue that has the most resonance for me is the Wall Street assessment, both now, and at the time of the merger, that HP's non-printing businesses have no value on the Street. In other words, if HP were to be bought by some other firm, the Wall Street consensus is that such an acquirer should simply eliminate the other businesses. HP's value is actually less as currently structured because eliminating these other businesses has closing costs associated with this shutdown activity.

The clear implication here is that Walter Hewlett was absolutely correct in opposing this merger, since the result clearly is that 20 billion dollars was completely wasted, and precious time is still being lost on ineffective strategies to revive these businesses. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that Walter Hewlett should have been given more credit than he received, even from Burrows, for opposing this capital and job destruction, even in the face of Fiorina's personal attacks.

This book should have pointed out that these at-risk businesses can still be saved, particularly the server and server-related businesses, with the appointment of proper management by the Board of Directors. What they need to be looking for this time is not someone whose picture has been on the cover of "Fortune" magazine, as was Carly's before she was hired, but someone with the knowledge and interest in saving HP. Carly not only does not have the engineering expertise, she simply creates the impression that she has no interest in HP's existing businesses, even printing, which she has left to wither on the vine in a new investment sense.

HP has had a computer server business for over 25 years. It is a big market, roughly 50 billion yearly and rising. HP has 27%, but has failed to gain any share at all from the collapse of Sun Microsystems. Instead, customers are transfering to IBM and Dell, which should be a big wake-up call for the Board. Dell Computer is number one in market position for the key Linux server business, perhaps because of HP's totally insular and uninformed approach to this market. A lot of hard work by HP employees went into building a formerly successful server business, it is senseless to discard this potentially excellent business because Carly is more interested in trying to sell MP3s at Starbucks, something that will never generate much profit.

I would have liked to have seen a clear statement in this book that if in the summer of 2004 if HP's non-printer businesses are still worth zero, that the HP Board of Directors needs hire a new CEO. Doubtless they prefer to have a charming dialogue with Carly about her boneheaded hipster ideas involving HP products in Starbucks rather than argue with some computer nerd about computer enterprise/service-provider product investments, but I would argue that being true to their responsibilities requires that they do the later, whether they like it or not. It would have been good for Burrows' book to say so.

Insightful!.......2004-06-09

Peter Burrows offers insights into high level business, where personality matters more than economics, as he explores the mammoth HP-Compaq merger. Most mergers fail to make money or to produce the promised "synergies" so, he asks, why - other than ego - do CEOs pursue them? Though stylistically somewhat trite, this book successfully explores the HP Board's decision to approve the merger, with Walter B. Hewlett's vote in favor, and his subsequent lonely, ultimately quixotic battle against it. The most contentious issues in contemporary business are all here: shareholder rights and value vs. CEO power; employee-oriented cultures vs. "re-engineering;" corporate integrity vs. sharp practice; and the interesting spectacle of a ruthless, hard-headed female CEO pitted against a sensitive, cello-playing man. The author says Hewlett-Packard executives were told not to speak with him after he quoted merger critics in Business Week, so there is an inevitable Walter Hewlett bias. We found this to be a very good read, even a must read, for corporate warriors.

Backfire: A Reporter's Look at Affirmative Action

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Affirmative Action Debate Overwhelms Author
Interesting review of AA policies in practice

Backfire: A Reporter's Look at Affirmative Action
Robert Zelnick
Manufacturer: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Zelnick, a reporter for ABC News, obviously shares the opinion of many middle-class white Americans that affirmative action, however good its intentions, has helped foster racial animosity and inequal opportunity. Zelnick writes sharply, even angrily, about his own observations of affirmative action at work. If America is moving toward a consensus that affirmative action has outlived its usefulness, then this attack underscores the resentment driving that movement.

Book Description

Where affirmative action works and where it causes even its intended beneficiaries more harm than good.

Customer Reviews:

Affirmative Action Debate Overwhelms Author.......2000-11-21

Bob Zelnick and I agree that affirmative action as often practiced in the real world causes much inadvertent harm. Abstract principles may look good on paper, but fail miserably when acted upon. He offers us numerous horror stories that should legitimately enrage us. Zelnick takes to task the hypocrisy of the major corporations who readily advocate affirmative policies knowing full well it cost them little in doing so. The firms truly paying the price are mostly small to mid size business entities. Nevertheless, I still maintain that fair minded and well thought out affirmative action remedies can be beneficial. Zelnick conveniently ignores our nation's long established history of racial prejudice. He overlooks the cold fact that many white people have always made sure their relatives and friends received special consideration. There has always been a sort of affirmative action for the wealthy and powerful. Also, a minority person may be rejected for employment due to the tacit, if not explicit, bias of the company. People tend to choose their own kind. What should be done, for instance, about a business hesitant to hire an Afro-American individual to represent their services and products to its white customer base? In such an unfair environment, how can a minority candidate receive a fair break? Aren't we caught in a Catch 22 vicious cycle? There are no easy answers to this dilemma, but Zelnick refuses to look at the other side of this most important debate. Absolutist positions are far easier for us to handle, but this mind set may distort the actual ambiguity and complexity of the situation.

A real crisis, however, develops when affirmative action is used to give an advantage to the less qualified. How can a rational person justify the hiring of shabbily qualified minority policemen merely to comply with affirmative action mandates? The sports world suits up only its best players for the game. Long ago even the most racist sports organizations abandoned their prejudices because they were beginning to lose too many contests to integrated teams. Self preservation sometimes motivates one to do the right thing. Why abandon the principle that only the best be chosen when the conversation turns towards the business sector and academics? Why can't we be consistent? Zelnick's book serves the purpose of meticulously detailing the injustices of some Liberal conceived affirmative action policies. Do you require such documentation? If so, you should obtain a copy of Zelnick's book. I cannot, however, recommend it on any other level. Zelnick candidly subtitled his book as "A Reporter's Look at Affirmative Action." A journalist perspective alas does not suffice. This national discussion requires the attention of its social philosophers. Zelnick is not up to the task.

Interesting review of AA policies in practice.......1999-03-10

The author performs a credible job of reviewing many of the common problems associated with the implementation of Affirmative Action. Unfortunately, he fails to adequately demonstrate why these policies could not have produced any other results. For a more intellectual discussion on why discrimination (rather than racism, sexism, etc.) is difficult to maintain in a capitalist society, read Nobel Prize Winner (Economics) Gary Becker's The Economics of Discrimination. James Bovard's Farm Fiasco is an example of why the policies used in Affirmative Action fail whenever they are applied, whether the "problem" to be resolved is race, ethnicity, and gender or occuptional (farmers receiving subsidies, protection from competition, etc.).

Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement

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Missed an opportunity

Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement
David Chalmers
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Klan

ASIN: 074252311X

Book Description

David Chalmers, the leading historian of the Ku Klux Klan, brings the story of America's oldest terrorist society up to date. Chalmers skillfully shows how Klan violence actually aided the civil rights movement of the 1960s and revolutionized the role of the national government in the protection of civil rights. He follows the forty-year struggle to punish Klan murderers through the courts of Alabama, Georgia, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and how Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center finally found a way to bring the Klan down.

Customer Reviews:

Missed an opportunity.......2006-03-04

Chalmers' Backfire is intended to illustrate how the Klan's activities backfired and actually helped the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s. Chalmers cites examples, but fails to provide and in-depth analysis to support his thesis. He spends the second half of the book discussing the downfall of the Klan and the continued rise of the movement after loosing one of its most prominent faces, Dr. King.

The entire book is filled with useful information, but half digresses from a strong thesis. Supporting his thesis throughout the book would have made his case that much stronger.

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Backfire

Backfire
Steve Simmons
Manufacturer: Hats Off Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1587361256

Book Description

A Russian Tupolev Backfire bomber leaves Cuba on a secret mission, carrying eight nuclear weapons. With an escort of two Mig-29 fighters and two navy F-14 Tomcats, the Backfire plans to fly its usual route into the Gulf of Mexico. But no one predicted that two Cuban rebels would sabotage the plane by hiding a homemade bomb in the plane's cockpit.

The flight proceeds as normal—until the bomb explodes. With the pilot half-alive and the rest of the crew dead, the failsafe system malfunctions, causing the Backfire to drop its deadly cargo over the Louisiana coast. A platoon of marines and two weapons scientists have only 24 hours to disarm eight nuclear bombs. Can they do it in time?

Meanwhile, a massive hurricane named Evita is making her way toward the coast, consuming everything in her path, and the Russians are faced with political turmoil in Cuba. Power-hungry General Morales attempts to seize control while President Castro is out of the country. Will the combination of Russian and loyal Cuban forces be enough to stop Morales?

How will this long day end? Will Cuba's government fall? Will Evita prevent the Marine Corps from disarming the weapons? Or will they be successful in stopping a potential nuclear firestorm?

Danger has been brought to America by the Backfire!

Customer Reviews:

Backfire.......2003-05-06

I received this book as a gift for my birthday. If I had paid for it I would have felt I got my monies worth. I liked it. I read fiction every day. I usually read a book every week or so. I found this book to be entertaining and think it was a pretty good first effort for Steve Simmons. I actually laughed out loud several times which is rare for me unless I'm reading Joeseph Wambaugh. I would recommend this book. The only critiscism I have are quite a few typos and missused words. I hope he writes another book because I think he will just get better. This has a whirlwind pace to it and is set over a very short time span. Buy it.

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Fictional People-Real Settings

Backfire
Christopher Newman
Manufacturer: Fawcett
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0449132951
Release Date: 1990-01-29

Book Description

In 1963, a beautiful young girl dies in the middle of an abortion on a cold table in a motel room. The cover-up is quick, quiet and -- for almost thirty years -- worth every penny. Now it's 1991. At the dawn of a presidential campaign, the old secret suddenly surfaces. To one man it means enormous profit. To a second man it means a lethal mystery. When the stakes are high, there are no loyalties and no rules -- even for top-level U.S. government agents. Especially for them.

Customer Reviews:

Fictional People-Real Settings.......2000-05-13

Much of the content of this book is set in SW MO in real towns-from St Louis to Aurora-Branson to Shell Knob. The author has researched his setting and placed a key location-a horse and cattle ranch-just a couple of miles from a place where I grew up. While there are errors in his local descriptions, the events of his book could have taken place.

The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-meant Parenting Backfires

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The Psychology of Parental Control: How Well-meant Parenting Backfires
Wendy S. Grolnick
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer

ASIN: 0805835415

Book Description

This book presents a theory of parenting that takes seriously the idea that children are agents whose capacity for self-regulation and also their willingness to follow the wishes of their parents may be undermined by well-intentioned parental practices.A

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