Politico: Three women who might join the GOP ticket (Palin, Fiorina, Hutchison)

Three women who might join the GOP ticket

While the vice presidential slot may be John McCain’s best means of wooing those Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters who remain loathe to embrace Barack Obama, the Republican party is a thin source of politically viable women, leaving McCain with few top-tier options.

The most-mentioned potential running mates — former Republican candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty — are all men. Yet no clear front-runner has emerged, and there are at least three women McCain might select to fill out the ticket. All three would mark a symbolic turn away from Vice President Dick Cheney, the ultimate D.C. old-boys-club insider.

One obvious choice is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She’s as near to Cheney on policy as she is far from him symbolically. Rice, however, has consistently denied interest. While such denials are par for the course for prospective veeps, if Rice is indeed out of the mix, that would leave McCain with three other likely female running mates to consider:

Sarah Palin

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may be nationally unknown, but in her state she is nothing short of a political phenomenon.

Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina has an up-by-her-own-bootstraps success story, having worked her way from a start as a young secretary straight through the glass ceiling to become Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive from 1999 to 2005. She presently serves as the chair of the organization tasked by the Republican National Committee with preparing the party’s crucial get-out-the-vote operation. It’s no symbolic post, but a crucial position for a party facing an uphill presidential contest.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

Last week Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the longest-tenured female Republican senator, joined McCain for a fundraising sprint in the Lone Star state. Hutchison, who until recently headed the Senate Republican Conference, now serves as chairwoman of the Republican Policy Committee, two top Beltway party posts.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11258.html



From left to right, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The Death of a CEO

How the Lack of a Critical People Skill Contributed to Carly Fiorina's Failure

02/22/2005 by Rob Enderle

http://www.technologypundits.com/index.php?article_id=57



When Carly, who was represented as somewhat of a marketing expert, started at HP she almost immediately alienated some of the most powerful reporters in the industry. She did this by denying interviews to people who didn’t want to tell the story she wanted to tell, a story that they apparently weren’t interested in. Instead they wanted to focus on the uniqueness of being the most powerful female executive in the world that wasn’t a queen and, as a result, these reporters got the impression she was illegitimate royalty and a problem that needed to be fixed. If she had only realized that letting them tell their stories would have allowed her to build relationships that would eventually benefit her own efforts she would have likely behaved differently but that was not the case and this came back to haunt her during her biggest project and when her career at HP ended.

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Carly won the fight (the HP / Compaq merger) but at such a cost that many feel she was a crippled leader from then on. Constant reports of HP employee dissatisfaction leaked out of the company and the proxy fight polarized the employee and investment base forcing many to choose sides against HP’s CEO. Painful leaks haunted her from then on as those that were against her inside the company aligned with reporters outside the company to take shots at her at almost every opportunity.

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The firing of three key executives, one of which had been covering up critical problems, made many doubt Carly really was running the company and once again focused the outside world on her leadership skills. People, or more accurately, her inability to understand and deal with them effectively had once again caused her to look inept in her role as CEO.

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Being able to motivate, understand, manipulate, drive, and anticipate people is a critical skill to any executive, particularly a CEO. As this example showcases not having that skill can be mitigated for a time but the end, in my experience, has always been the end of a promising executive career. Carly could have gone on to politics, to another more powerful position, or to virtually anything she wanted to do had she just understood the people critical to her better. She could have even delegated much of this to another and was given the unusual opportunity to do this had she accepted this as a shortcoming she needed to mitigate.