A true privilege

In the past eight months, I have had the unique privilege of working again with HP (even getting paid, which at this point in time is a pretty good metric).

The groups have included some Leadership Training seminars, some Leadership Team meetings, and some workshops co-sponsored with Stanford (and even one with Harvard, can you imagine?).

All told, a cross-section of several hundred senior folk from every major group of HP...

The points to make are several:

1. I was uniformly impressed by the MOOD and the OPTIMISM.  The outlook is a cautious, sober, clear-viewed appreciation of how difficult this modern world is--in terms of competition, dynamic product and services definition--but a belief that HP once again can be equal to that challenge.

THIS IS A VERY DIFFERENT and very POSITIVE MOOD and VIEW than the 2002-2012 samples

2. The attitude about, and evident support for, INNOVATION is DRAMATICALLY HIGHER.  This is the sine que non of future success.  Again, there was a perspective that this is IMP:RTANT, nay KEY, for HP to prevail, an attitude that was curiously absent for way too long.

3. The third thing to report is just the QUIET CONFIDENCE that HP is once again acting in a way that makes them PROUD to be part of it, instead of APOLOGETIC.

None of these solve issues like "How is your LapTop selling" or "Why did you miss the mobile phone biz and what are you going to do now?" but those issues were impossible to deal with in a constructive way with the mood and feeling that too long dogged this company.

So, I AM INSPIRED about the perceptions I report here.  Let's hope it translates.