The recent termination of Hewlett Packard President & CEO Leo Apotheker in late September was hardly a surprise given that his policies and strategies had become more and more unpredictable and perplexing. But what was surprising was that his severance package was somehow valued, by the powers that be, at a staggering $25million. Now I never met the man but it seems pretty clear that he was verging on the incompetent. It also seems clear that he was let go because he wasn’t good enough. So will someone, anyone, tell me why his termination for failure required an accompanying package of $25million.

And I’ve been carrying a bit of a grudge about this ever since. I mean, when will we learn that success in business needs to be rewarded but that failure mustn’t be. HP was the latest to do the business world a disservice and I have been unable to explain to anyone as to how and why this could still happen given everything that has transpired to corporations in the spotlight over the past few years.

So you can imagine my delight when I started doing some research a few weeks ago on potential replacements for Steve Jobs as our daily point of inspiration (more…)