At a recent Morgan Hill Toastmasters meeting, Harry Albert got
up to tell a story. It was an enlightening anecdote about how to
treat people decently
–
”
the HP Way,
”
he called it.
At a recent Morgan Hill Toastmasters meeting, Harry Albert got up to tell a story. It was an enlightening anecdote about how to treat people decently – “the HP Way,” he called it.
Before becoming a San Juan Bautista-based real estate agent, Albert worked for 32 years at Hewlett-Packard. While he was employed there in the early 1970s, founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard broke the bad news that the high-tech firm needed to notch up its budgetary belt a bit.
“Fundamentally, things were bad,” Albert recalls. “They wanted everyone to take a 10 percent pay cut and work 10 percent less. If we did that, we wouldn’t have to lay anyone off.”
Right before the company announcement, two prospective HP employees had just finished an intensive interviewing process. They’d verbally been offered jobs. Albert overheard his supervisor talk to the head of the training department about this specific hiring situation. According to Albert, here’s the kernel of the conversation:
“Well, did you tell them they had a job?” the training manager asked.
“I haven’t written them a letter,” the supervisor replied.
“No,” the manager said. “That’s not what I asked you. Did you tell them they have a job?”
“Yes,” the supervisor answered.
“Then get on the phone, tell them what happened, and if they take a 10 percent pay cut like the rest of us, they’ll have a job,” the manager commanded.
Albert’s small story gives insight into the HP Way, a corporate philosophy that built a highly respected multi-billion dollar global company. Unfortunately, in recent years the HP Way has gone through some serious neglect by Hewlett-Packard – and that has tarnished the company’s image.
If you’ve been following the news, you’ve no doubt heard about how top Hewlett-Packard executives got into hot water for their corporate spying and “pretexting” – better known as lying – to investigate a source on the company’s board leaking information to the media. Last week, former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and four other officials were in Santa Clara County Superior Court charged with identity theft and three other felonies.
No doubt, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard would be very angry. This potentially criminal activity is not the HP Way, they’d say. They’d be shocked that the Palo Alto firm they founded in 1938 – in a one-car garage next to a house at 367 Addison Ave. – now faces this messy muddle.
After graduating as electrical engineering students from Stanford University, the two friends decided to stay in the Bay Area and start an electronics company. Their first product was a measurement device called an audio oscillator. Their first big sale of this contraption was to Walt Disney Studios, which wanted the oscillators to monitor sound while making the animated film “Fantasia.”
On Jan. 1, 1939, the two partners flipped a coin to determine the order of their names, and “Hewlett-Packard” was christened. Working long, hard hours – and using their kitchen oven to dry the paint on their oscillator panels – Hewlett and Packard moved out of the garage the following year and rented a bigger office on a street corner of El Camino Real right next to Tinker Bell’s Fix-it Shop.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Hewlett and Packard developed their famous corporate philosophy – the “HP Way.” It emphasized basic values – honesty and integrity, respect for individuals, innovation, teamwork and a consideration for the needs of the customer and the community. And they stressed to all their employees the need to uphold these values.
Packard died in 1996, and Hewlett died in 2001. Because of the HP Way, both were mourned as moral pillars of Silicon Valley.
In 1999, HP’s board hired Carly Fiorina as the company’s CEO. A smart and tough chief, Fiorina felt the HP Way of doing business was too “old-fashioned” for her. Times had changed, she said, and Hewlett-Packard needed a more cut-throat, show-no-mercy business approach. She replaced the HP Way with a ruthless management style.
Fiorina sacked 7,000 employees. Next, HP purchased Compaq, a computer company with a hard-nose business approach that dramatically changed Hewlett-Packard’s corporate culture. Fiorina’s anti-HP Way philosophy helped bring about the very public – and possibly illegal – spy scandal the company now faces.
Maybe Carly Fiorina was right. Maybe Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard came from an old-fashioned era. They came from a time when a promise was a promise and people held themselves to a high standard of ethical behavior. Maybe their “HP Way” is an outdated notion that doesn’t work in the real world. Maybe, in today’s cynical business environment, nice guys do finish last.
Maybe … but I don’t think so. I think the HP Way is precisely why HP became a multi-billion dollar firm. The two founders – nice guys Hewlett and Packard – truly cared about people and wanted to see everyone succeed. People trusted them and respected their company. And that made them great successes both financially and, more importantly, as human beings.
It’s a lesson Americans can learn today – and not just in business. There’s plenty of folks in politics making front-page headlines lately who could have benefited greatly simply by following the HP Way. I won’t name names, the list is much too long.
But perhaps the HP Way didn’t start with Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard. They were only the first to apply it in building a major American corporation. If you look at the tenets of the HP Way, you’ll see it really reflects very spiritual ideas.
Although, these ideas are the foundation for many of the world’s religious doctrines, I believe a philosopher who wandered around Palestine’s Sea of Galilee about 2,000 years ago put the HP Way into a nutshell when he taught his followers some basic management skills.
“Love one another,” the great thinker said. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
For some, the HP Way sounds too simple to work. But it works because it is simple. Just ask Harry Albert. In his 32 years at Hewlett-Packard, he witnessed that fact every day.
