????去年9月，梅格?惠特曼走馬上任，出任惠普公司（Hewlett-Packard）新一任首席執(zhí)行官。就任幾個月后，她就和員工開了一系列見面會，了解情況。參加會面的工程師和經理人當時的表情恐怕不能只用悶悶不樂來形容。惠特曼發(fā)言時，許多員工直直地盯著她看，另外一些人則完全不和新來的老板有任何眼神交流。實際上，他們只顧低著頭，一個勁兒地在手持數(shù)碼設備上敲敲打打。

????一個員工不無挑釁地告訴她：“你的話正在博客上直播。”惠特曼立即反擊道：“你們這么干是泄露公司機密。這說明這個公司的氛圍很不開心。你這是希望惠普沒好日子過。”頓時，人們停下手，屋里突然變得鴉雀無聲，手機也紛紛被調低了鈴聲的音量。

????員工公然蔑視公司首腦，同時惠特曼承認身處困境，這些跡象都表明，自從去年遭遇了一系列讓人蒙受奇恥大辱的重大挫折后，這家技術巨頭的內部情況已經糟糕到了什么程度。惠特曼就任首席執(zhí)行官之前的不過幾個月時間里，惠普先是耗巨資推出平板電腦，最終卻宣告失敗；隨后，是否要剝離龐大的個人電腦業(yè)務這個話題引發(fā)了一場令人痛心、沸沸揚揚的公開討論；再接著，在不到七年時間里，惠普的第三任首席執(zhí)行官被掃地出門。

????如果惠普遭遇的這些麻煩只局限于2011年的這幾個月時間里就好了。但迄今為止的十年間，這個公司有時候更像是一出拙劣的真人秀，而不是全球最偉大的企業(yè)之一。2002年，惠普并購康柏公司（Compaq）時，云譎波詭的明爭暗斗交替上演，公司的公關危機由此拉開了大幕。隨后，沃爾特?休利特斗膽表達異議，結果卻遭到行事高調的首席執(zhí)行官卡莉?菲奧莉娜當眾嘲弄，這場危機算是惡化到了無以復加的境地。要知道，休利特既是董事會成員，同時也是惠普公司創(chuàng)始人之一的公子。同時，公司董事會內部不和，四分五裂。形勢失控，某些董事甚至向媒體泄密，而董事長則雇傭了私家偵探，截獲這些董事（及相關記者）的電話錄音，一定要揪出告密者。最終，公司董事長和首席執(zhí)行官被迫前往國會宣誓，為自己辯解一番，這些爾虞我詐才算了事。隨后，被視為公司救星的首席執(zhí)行官馬克?赫德遭到驅逐，因為他被指控與一位營銷顧問有染，而這位顧問曾是色情片女星。涉事雙方都堅決、斷然、明確地否認搞了什么見不得人的勾當。

????只要深入惠普的董事會，素材就夠“菲爾博士”（著名訪談類節(jié)目——譯注）制作整整一個月的節(jié)目了。這些董事們明爭暗斗的勁頭堪比初中生之間的拉幫結派，而不是大家心目中明辨是非、引領方向的積極力量。正像我們所看到的那樣，惠普的董事們有時候甚至拒絕同處一室，同時相互指責對方是騙子、告密者、叛徒。而在遴選首席執(zhí)行官這項他們最重要的使命上，他們又一再失誤：他們挑中的新領導最明顯的特征就是，這個人必然跟前任背道而馳。

????所有這些已使公司無法解決它所面臨的根本問題：簡言之，惠普已經迷失了方向。公司已經陷入生死存亡的危機中。它仍然是個龐然大物，在“《財富》美國500強榜單”上排名第10位，2011年的銷售收入高達1,270億美元，贏利為70億美元。但是其發(fā)展前景堪憂。比如，2011年的盈利水平比前年降低了19%。在幾乎每個前沿業(yè)務領域，惠普都四面受敵，市場份額縮水，贏利能力下降。

????譯者：清遠

????A few months after she took over as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) last September, Meg Whitman held one in a series of get-to-know-you meetings with employees. To say the audience, a group of software engineers and managers, was sullen would be an understatement. As Whitman spoke, many of them glared at her. Others weren't making eye contact with their new boss. Their heads were down, and they were tapping furiously on handheld devices.

????"Your comments are being live-blogged," one employee told her defiantly. Whitman challenged the man. "You all have taken leaking to a new art form," she said. "It's a sign of an unhappy company. You wish HP ill." The tapping suddenly stopped, and as the room fell silent, the mobile devices were lowered.

????The employees' open contempt for the head of the company and Whitman's acknowledgment of their misery were signs of just how dire things had gotten inside the technology titan after a humiliating series of epic stumbles last year. Just in the few months before Whitman became CEO, there was the costly failed launch of a tablet computer, a mortifying public waffling over whether to spin off the company's giant personal computer business, and then the drumming-out of its third CEO in less than seven years.

????If only HP's troubles were confined to a few months in 2011. For a decade now the company has sometimes seemed more like a tawdry reality show than one of the world's great enterprises. The public dysfunction started with the vicious infighting over HP's merger with Compaq in 2002, which reached its nadir when the company's high-profile CEO, Carly Fiorina, pilloried Walter Hewlett, a board member and son of a company founder, for daring to voice his opposition. There was a board riven by feuds -- so out of control that some directors were leaking secrets to the press while the chairman of the board was hiring private investigators to obtain their phone records (and those of reporters) to uncover the perpetrators. That bit of skullduggery ended with the company's chairman and its CEO both dragged before Congress to explain themselves under oath. Then came the ouster of the company's putative savior, CEO Mark Hurd, after allegations relating to his interactions with a marketing consultant who had been an actress in risqué movies; both parties absolutely, positively, categorically denied that there was any hanky-panky.

????Dr. Phil could fill a month's worth of shows just examining HP's board, whose dynamics have resembled those of rival junior high school cliques more than what is supposed to be a sage guiding force. At times, as we'll see, HP directors have refused to be in the same room with one another and have accused each other of lying, leaking, and betrayal. Time and again they've failed in their choice of CEO -- their most important task -- selecting a new leader whose most salient trait is that he or she is the opposite of the last one.

????All of this has impeded the company from tackling the fundamental problem it faces: Simply put, Hewlett-Packard has lost its way. The company is in the midst of an existential crisis. It remains a behemoth,No. 10on theFortune 500, with $127 billion in sales last year and $7 billion in earnings. But the trajectory is ominous. Those profits, for example, were 19% lower in 2011 than in the previous year. HP's business is under siege on almost every front, losing market share and facing declining margins.