Change at HP Merely for Change’s Sake

Why identify a “staid consensus-driven culture” as Hewlett-Packard’s great problem [“Daring to Be Different From the Old Hewlett-Packard,” March 6”]? Why not a discussion of General Motors’ “staid hierarchical-driven culture?”

After all, if HP’s stock has tripled recently, it must have been doing something right, right? And the good old, strictly top-down style of management rigidly embraced by General Motors has brought that company a near 50% loss in market share.

Chief Executive Carly Fiorina thinks HP can do better? How well off did she leave her last company, Lucent Technologies? Hasn’t it been found that Lucent largely missed the “explosion of the World Wide Web”?

The founders of Hewlett-Packard worked their whole lives to establish a company that would provide a model of business organization where employees’ input would have actual agency. Now that they’re gone, it seems that their legacy must be destroyed.

KENT SOUTHARD

Dana Point