Silicon Insider: Carly Fiorina's Failure to Communicate

Feb. 12 -- Carly, you could have just told us why.

The battle over the proposed Hewlett-Packard merger with Compaq has now reached the sulfurous stage, that moment in a family feud (and at HP this is most definitely about family) when words are said and actions done that can never, ever be taken back.

It began when HP CEO Carly Fiorina and HP's management, already suffering pushback from analysts and their own employees over the merger, suddenly were blindsided by a revolt by the company's largest private shareholders: the children and grandchildren of the two founders.

Since then, most of the nastiness has come from the side of HP management. It began with a newspaper ad quoting the late David Packard in apparent agreement with the idea of the merger. This led to an angry response by David Packard Jr. that his father would never had countenanced the company's growth through such a massive acquisition. Especially not with a culture so alien to the legendary HP Way.

It has only gotten worse. Though the odds still seem in management's favor, Fiorina and company still feel scared enough to resort to ad hominen attacks, most notably describing board member Walter Hewlett, who is leading the revolt, as a mere "academic." Hewlett has responded with angry national print ads saying "A $25 billion mistake is not the HP Way."

A Schism That Won't Be Healed

No matter how events play out from here, it is unlikely that this schism will ever be healed. If the proxy vote fails next month, Fiorina will resign. If it passes, one can easily imagine the two families beginning the long process of liquidating their ownership in HP.

Either way the vote goes, there will also be one other victim: the HP Way. Its preservation was the real reason for the founding families' revolt. Put simply, the Hewletts and Packards, along with thousands of other employees past and present, believed that the Way, the company's unique and influential culture, was HP's most important asset … and that it would be destroyed by the merger.