Meg Whitman’s first report card as CEO of Hewlett-Packard comes this afternoon when the company announces fourth-quarter earnings.
In the 60 days since she took the job, Whitman has settled on a strategy (keep HP in the PC business), worked to raise employee morale (terrible after three CEO ousters), and lifted the stock (up 12% since her appointment). But the former eBay chief, who lost her race for governor of California a year ago, has an enormous challenge ahead in reviving America’s largest technology company.
“There is a bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome in the organization,” she admitted at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit early last month, just days after she began the HP job. In a candid interview with Nina Easton, Fortune‘s Washington editor, Whitman compared HP to California–surprisingly, almost the same size by several key measures. But Whitman feels a lot more comfortable in one realm than the other, as she told us at the Summit.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d0XOGEv9TY&w=420&h=315]
Click here for the full transcript of the interview with Whitman at the MPW Summit.