The fallout from the Hewlett-Packard pretexting spying scandal continues to grow.
Blame it on a dysfunctional board that made it a disaster waiting to happen. Blame it on the toxic relationships in the boardroom.
The war between former chairwoman Patricia Dunn and Tom Perkins is a case in point.
All of that is revealed in gory detail by George Anders and Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal via the Sunday Times.
Perkins branded Dunn a "stickler for process and procedure". Dunn said the venture capitalist was a "controller". He wanted directors who were entrepreneurs connected with his firm, she wanted business leaders with runs on the board. Dunn was terrified of screwing up, Perkins was presenting the image risk taking, fast cars and sail boats. The list goes on.
Perkins would declare in front of board members: "We need a new chairman." According to Dunn, Perkins would poke her in the clavicle and say: "I made you chairman."
Did Perkins, author of the novel Sex and the Single Zillioniaire, have issues with women? Probably.
But Dunn had a problem with tunnel vision. In her eagerness to track down the leaker, she forgot about fairness and ethics. And in her desperation to avoid screwing up, she screwed up big time.
The piece is a striking reminder of what lessons HP presents for all boardrooms. Bad boards damage reputations and in the worst case, they can destroy companies.
Read through the piece and you are left with the moral: it might have been different if the problems had been addressed earlier.
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