Fiorina

A word most often used to describe Hewlett-Packard’s products may also describe its boss: scalable.

The 50-year-old Carly Fiorina, chairman and CEO, makes the transition from talking to government leaders and Hollywood moguls to sitting down with local VARs seem effortless, says Jack Novia, senior vice president of HP’s Customer Solutions Group. “Carly has this tremendous passion that comes through,” he says. “When she sits down with you, you are the most important person to her at that time.”

The consummate celebrity CEO, Fiorina this past year focused that passion on HP’s push into consumer electronics, garnering profiles in magazines, catching photo ops with movie stars and even crossing the line into politics, sitting on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s transition committee.

She also demonstrated that she means business after HP in August turned in a disappointing quarter in which the enterprise server and storage unit lost both money and sales. Fiorina fired the unit’s two top executives, Peter Blackmore and Jim Milton, and then met with partners at a conference in Houston to talk about reviving the storage business. There she displayed her softer side.

“Carly has this reputation of being very smart and very tough, so I was very surprised at how personable and approachable she was,” says Rich Baldwin, CEO of Nth Generation Computing, San Diego.

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But it wasn’t all glad-handing. Don Richie, president of Sequel Data Systems, Austin, says Fiorina listened to complaints, but spoke plainly with partners about what she would and would not do. “She listened to us and was responsive,” Richie says. “But there was no doubt that she was in control.”

During the first half, Fiorina grew sales 10 percent to $39 billion, but she will need all the scalability she can muster to keep HP’s various business units on track.