By Bruce Barton

Bruce Barton/Town Crier Carly Fiorina discusses the human side of business with San Jose Business Journal Publisher Vintage Foster at the Commonwealth Club of California Friday.

For former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, there’s no success like failure.

The world-renowned businesswoman and part-time Los Altos Hills resident charmed a large gathering during an Oct. 20 appearance at the Commonwealth Club of California in Santa Clara, the latest public appearance in support of her new book, “Tough Choices: A Memoir.” The book’s title references her stormy HP reign, which began in 1999 at the height of the tech boom, and ended with her unceremonious firing in February 2005.

In good humor and often philosophical (she majored in philosophy at Stanford University in the 1970s), Fiorina said business is about products and profit, but also about people.

“The people part of it is why I wrote this book,” she said. “This book is also about fear - my own.”

Early in her career, Fiorina recalled that she was afraid to try because she was afraid to fail.

“I learned that everyone’s afraid,” she said. “Anyone who wants to lead change has to know what people are afraid of.”

Fiorina started as a secretary in the early days of real estate firm Marcus & Millichap. After returning to school for a master’s degree in marketing, she made big strides at AT&T in the early 1980s, rising from management trainee to a vice president.

After her success at Lucent Technologies and resultant recognition from Fortune magazine as “the most powerful woman in business,” HP came calling. After nine straight quarters of missed projections, HP leaders knew change had to happen and hired Fiorina to do it. Naturally, the changes she employed - overhauling the process for job performance evaluations, the 2002 merger with rival Compaq and orchestrating approximately 36,000 layoffs - drew outrage, notably among family members of the HP founders.

“Change is always resisted - always,” she said. “The natural momentum of any institution is to preserve the status quo.”

Timing wasn’t so great either. The announced merger with Compaq came one week before Sept. 11. The tech market crashed. Her move to change measures of job performance created friction.

“When you change the way people are paid - it’s really personal,” she said.

Still, Fiorina figured she laid the groundwork for HP’s rebound. She said she triggered the increase in the number of HP patents. Now HP is considered one of the leading innovative companies. With HP’s stock currently flourishing, some pundits who were skeptical in the beginning now acknowledge the Compaq merger was the right thing to do.

Through it all, Fiorina said she was guided by her honesty, integrity and respect for others. “One of the things I talk about in this book is not selling your soul,” she said, and added, “I hope I will always be a kind person.”

She said if she had a chance to do things differently at HP, she would have “assessed board dynamics” and opted for members with more operations experience. She would not have starred in an HP commercial posing in front of the founders’ garage. But all in all, Fiorina felt she did a lot right and little wrong as the company’s CEO.

“I didn’t fail,” she said bluntly. “I was fired.”