Sometimes crisis management by the books crashes too.
Let's take a moment to review the "facts" of the HP case.
- A company with troubled history when it comes to palace intrigue and board shenanigans pro-actively roots out corruption.
- They oust a CEO who was widely heralded as a white knight on the heels of an apparent sex scandal (or something unseemly, anyway) and misleading expense reports.
- In doing so, they nip the crisis in the bud, get the details out all at once, and prove that they are upholding the highest moral standards and are beyond reproach.
A shrewd move, taken directly from the crisis management and damage control play books, right? So how did something so apparently neat and tidy veer into the highly public mess that it now has become?
The simple answer is that the facts as presented did not pass the sniff test. There were holes in the story – the holes let doubt and speculation creep in and kept the story alive (see Joe Nocera's excellent NY Times column: Real Reason for ousting H.P.'s Chief)
Also, things are never quite so simple when highly visible public companies and their similarly highly visible leaders are involved. Add the drama and politics of board conflict, the Shakespearean dimensions of a turnaround and leader who made it happen, and consider the company's history and you have all the elements of a story that continues to unfold and keep the attention of the media and public at large.
What should they have done differently? That is an excellent question – it seems some of the decisions were made purely for PR reasons.
Hurd (apparently) wanted to quickly settle to keep the story out of the headlines and keep his job, no doubt. The board (in one version of events) wanted to get in front of the harassment story, which would inevitably get out, and set an example.
Yet despite their efforts it has been a PR debacle.
If the board just wanted Hurd out irrespective of any scandal, as the NY Times column said, then the company should have been clear and cut ties and let the chips fall where they might; then, the story might be about second guessing a board and reviewing a track that has been reported for the most part as stellar.
In this case, the stories have been about much more unseemly things like smoke screens and lurid events, and recollections of previous palace intrigue.
