Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal wrote a fine article in today's edition, discussing the behaviors of HP's two most recent, most senior female officers, Carly Fiorina and Patty Dunn.
His point is that both women did their gender a disservice by ducking for cover and choosing to be victims in their individual stories of strife and loss at the computer and printer manufacturing company.
Mr. Murray is, I think, entirely correct in noting that both women protest that nothing was their fault, and that they bore no responsibility for anything that happened to them. And HP certainly has suffered for their actions, inactions, and failures while they were affiliated with it.
What I don't understand is why more attention isn't showered on at least two more successful and stable female CEOs: Meg Whitman of eBay, and Carol Bartz of Autodesk.
The chart at the top of this piece displays the stock price performances of four companies that have been led by women for at least several years. Jill Barad was CEO at Mattel during 1997-2000. Meg Whitman has headed eBay since 1998, while Carly Fiorina was CEO of HP during the period 1999-2005. Carol Bartz has been CEO of Autodesk since 1992, only stepping down from active leadership of the firm earlier this year.
While Barad and Fiorina destroyed value at their companies during their tenure, Whitman and Bartz have had longer tenures and presided over significant wealth creation for their shareholders. Although Whitman's eBay has slumped recently, it still has an enviable record during her tenure, roughly equaling that of Autodesk for the period in which eBay has been public.
In my opinion, however, Carol Bartz is the class of the class. She has created value consistently at Autodesk for 14 years, with the exception of some rough years in the late '90s. Even then, however, the company tended to tread water, and not lose substantial value for long time periods.
I think it does seem unfair that Bartz is not accorded the type of press that GE's Jack Welch received for his long-term performance. Blogger is not cooperating with the uploading of a price chart comparing GE and Autodesk over many years, but suffice to say, Bartz looks as good as Welch, when the two companies' performances are compared for the years in which they both were CEOs of their respective companies.
If Bartz is being ignored because of her gender, then that's even more bad news to add to Alan Murray's contentions. Not only do poorly performing female CEOs, like Jill Barad, get spotlighted, but the rare excellent performers, like Bartz, are conveniently forgotten.
Personally, I believe that good leaders of either gender are more like each other, than they are like non-leaders of their own gender. Bartz is a great CEO who happens to be a woman, not vice versa. In this case, I'd like to learn more about how Bartz ran Autodesk so well in a tough, single market business. Welch had the luxury of multiple businesses driving GE. I think we all lose a lot when successful CEOs like Carol Bartz go unstudied and unrecognized.
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