“One of the brightest leaders I have ever met”

By Tom Quiner

Carly Fiorina rose impressively to the top of Hewlett Packard.

She did it the old fashioned way: based on merit.

She was fired the old fashioned way: based on office politics.

This is the account of Ms. Fiorina’s tenure at HP given by Bill Mutell in an interview with Breitbart. Mr. Mutell is the former CEO of Compaq which merged with HP. He spent 24 years as an Army officer and also worked for National Intelligence.

He said that “people who were at HP who, in their minds, Carly as the outsider would never be successful.” Even more, he said that …

This was the cultural battle that was fought during Carly’s tenure where we had a lot of legacy Hewlett Packard employees who were very set in their ways. One thing about Carly is that she asks important questions and the status quo is not something she accepts very well. And when executives tell Carly, that’s the way we’ve always done it at HP”—even though those ways are irrelevant or unproductive—Carly does not stand for that. Carly is all about tearing down walls and bureaucracies.

So was Fiorina as bad as her detractors have claimed? Quite the contrary according to Mutell. He said good leaders shape the future, not react to the past. That’s Carly Fiorina:

“I’ve been around a lot of leaders in my life. I’ve worked for some very impressive generals and I have to tell you in nearly 40 years of combined military service and working for public companies in senior exec roles—I have never encountered a leader like Carly. She is probably one of the brightest, most articulate, well versed, and engaging leaders I have ever met. What you see is what you get. Not something that Congress or the political class wants to see.”

Sounds like the exact opposite of Hillary Clinton.