Could a more thorough decision-making process have averted the problems HP faced from 1999 to 2001? (Please support your arguments with specific examples taken from the case)

HP began to lag rapidly behind their competitors loosing sales and their market share. Carly Fiorina arrived in 1999 and unveiled plans for a major reorganisation, being estimated that reorganisation would take a year to complete. However reorganisation was to be completed in 3 months. Carly knew she had to act as quickly as possible to try and contain the crisis as quickly as possible. However Carly moved to fast. Emplooyees comented “keeping up at Fiorinas pace could be wearing”. Slowing down and waiting for a better opportunity to arise would have provided Carly with more knowledge on how to progress to fix the crisis.

The change of the profitsharing system to perfomance based bonus system caused a few middle managers to leave between 1999-2000 period, support of the decision was not accepted by all the employees. However Carly needed HP to perform as she realized that HP needed to step up and start to take back their market share. As we know, a performance based bonus system creates an incentive that rewards employees for achievement based on their work ethics.

The HP way worked before, even though it opperated at a slower pace, however it indulged in lots of room for creativity. The New HP way worked to achieve short-term gains cutting costs, this decision was made because HP needed to become more profitable and commercially viable, achieving this would rise the share price, it also would also bring confidence back to HP. This decision was made based on steps that would be generally used by other companies in similar situations. However when Carly took this plan of attack it sort of faded out the old HP ways traditions especially