The Wall Street Journal had a relatively straightforward accounting of the what is know at this point, sans “I had no idea this would happen” pleadings from the alleged woman. Therefore, I’m not going to get into the so-called facts, I’m just going to comment on them:
Presume that the above referenced story is close to correct: Hurd, CEO of HP, does not have a sexual relationship with a woman. What he does have is a close personal relationship – he likes spending time with her. He becomes more involved than in other similar situations in the hiring of her services for the company, and when those services are used and they are onsite together they often end up dining together. I am going to NOT comment on the allegations of falsification of records in this post – that is the next one – I’m going to focus instead on just the words noted in this paragraph.
What is interesting is that up to this point, insert the word “man” for the word “woman” and it is not only common business practice but expected business practice.
Now insert for the word “woman” any of the following words: ”son” “daughter” “niece” “son-in-law” “ex-wife”. Each one of those words exudes a difference sense of rightness or wrongness to it, doesn’t it?
Which means that there are expectations about senior leaders behaviors which are rarely brought to the forefront. And those expectations are highly contextual. Let me list some examples:
- We expect senior leaders to hang out with other senior folks – not the folks of their choosing. If a senior leader does have a social food or drink gathering with other levels, it is expected to be a group not one on one.
- We expect senior leaders to show an interest in high potential folks in the business – not outside contractors. One on one dinners with high potential folks are encouraged, a contraction to point 1
- If the senior leader shows a special interest in one of the opposite sex when presumably hetrosexual tendencies have heretofore been exhibited, then one on one dinners or meetings are potentially problematic. The same is true for leaders with same sex tendencies for same sex meetings. This immediately means that there will be discrimination suits showing that only the opposite (same) sex people are discriminated against.
- If the company is wholly owned by a family, the senior leadership may co-mingle with other family members who are clearly going to be hired and mentored. If the company is wholly publicly owned, then senior leadership should not hire their family members. If the family has a majority or large ownership, behave as is its a family company and dare someone to be concerned.
- To supplement point 4, what constitutes a family is unclear in a professional sense. One short example: You marry someone who comes to the relationship with children. They are older, and do not form a legal relationship with you. Are those children “family” who can or cannot be hired at your company?
Those 5 points as examples of the situation are a clear indication that we have norms of behavior we expect but do not state, AND, if we stated them we’d there is a chance we’d be called a nasty name.
And that is what Mr Hurd’s situation brought to light for me – the need for clearer statements by Boards of behaviors they expect out of their senior leadership team.
