Bill Johnson and Gifford Pinchot III

 A few days ago, I was musing about Reflections.   Wow, some just come roaring back.

In early 1982, I was promoted into a new role at HP.  Instead of a Divisional Manager with a Profit-and-Loss division 1,000 miles from HP's Palo Alto headquarters, I was named Corporate Engineering Director with an office next door to Davd Packard himself.  The send-off from Colorado Springs, where I'd worked for 18 years, featured a set of gag gifts--among them, a certificate entitled Medal of Defiance

The certificate was laying atop a bookcase--not inconspicuous, but not really on display.  A fellow named Gifford Pinchot had come to interview me for a book about corporate innovation, sent my way by R &D VP Bill Walker of Tektronix.  I'd been in the US Forestry during college, so I knew the Pinchot name.  Indeed, his grandfather started the US Forest Service for Teddy Roosevelt. Espying the certificate, he whipped out a Polaroid camera, which is the only reason I can describe the award today.  I figured it was indeed a gag gift, and tossed it a few weeks later.

The manuscript arrived three years later to HP Public Relations, who blew a headgasket--taking the name of our founder in vain.  They showed up at my desk with a sheaf of paper--Chapter 1, of a proposed book named Intrapreneuring.  Nonplussed, I thought--ut-oh, here goes my job--but I said, "Maybe Dave is in, let's ask him."

Packard was in, and as I intoned something like "You probably won't remember this incident, since it was 15 years ago or more" he grabbed the papers, and scanned the front page.   Turning to me, he jabbed a finger at me and said, "Young man (I was 45), you're in a job now that you can stop lots of good things from happening.  Make sure that you don't."  He then handed the sheaf back to the hapless PR folk, and said, "Print it."

Pinchot's book garnered a New York Times article, a Time magazine story, and a spot on Jane Pauley's The Today Show, but Pinchot needed a compelling example.   He came back to HP, who turned him down cold, even though Robert Waterman and Tom Peters' book In Search of Excellence had come out (1982).

HP leaders had a long history of ducking the limelight.  Both founders eschewed press coverage; their approach was decidedly stealth mode.  We all knew the drill--no surprise.  HP PR did call me to say that Pinchot had asked, and that they'd declined, thanks.  And by the way, if he tries to go around them, don't.  I understood, perfectly.

HP's Management Council, 22 folk plus Dave and Bill who were now semi-retired, met once a year, in 1985 at the tony Meadowwood resort in St. Helena, CA.  The group had never before studied any competitor, but this time a facilitator launched the two-day meeting by handing out DEC's annual report.  He asked us to skim it, and then turn to the back page with the list of board members and officers.  He said, "I will go around the room, and I want each of you to describe who on that list you have met, and had a conversation with, and give us the context."

I was 21st to answer, and the first who had met any.  I knew two, both engineering Vice-Presidents.  Asked to describe how well I knew them, I asnwered, "Well, one of them (Bill Johnson) slept in my master bedroom last Saturday night."  That stopped the clock!   

The discussion with the facilitator was desultory--the group as a whole didn't think of DEC as a worthy foe.  We moved to other topics.  The group, it always seemed to me, preferred tactics to strategy, and evolutionary tactics at that.

The next morning, COO Dean Morton was given a phone message.  Do you remember those pink message slips that receptionists scribbled before cell phones?   Morton read it, blinked and then groaned.  Usually calm, he interrupted the speaker demanding, "What the hell is going on?  Forbes, Fortune,and the Wall Street Journal have canceled attending our annual press conference on Wednesday; they're each going to Apple's instead."

HP had just posted its best year ever, with CEO Young chairing a new Council on Competitiveness for President Ronald Reagan.  With $6 Billion revenue, four times that of Apple or Intel, HP was far and away the biggest high-tech company in Silicon Valley.  Sun Microsystems was a puny $38 Million.  Cisco an Oracle didn't yet exist.  Totally exasperated, Dean said, "What is this crap with Apple?  Don't we have anyone exciting like that noisy guy?"

I don't know what compelled me, but I heard myself exclaim: "I just got called by Time, the New York Times, and The Today Show, but Corporate pulic relations turned them all down."

Morton turned purple, then bellowed:  "Call them back.  Get on those programs!"

Serendipity often plays a huge role.  I booked the gigs, before Morton asked why they wanted me.  The NY Times and the Time magazine article were good, but not show-stoppers.  But when Jane Pauley featured Gifford and me on the Today Show, all bets were off.  The program aired around the world, re-running for years.  Michael Schrage did a story about it for the Harvard Business Review 25 years later, citing it as the poster-child for corporate innovation, for intrapreneuring, a word that stuck.

And while I owe it a lot to Pinchot, and to Packard's grace at a pivotal time, I also owe Bill Johnson a debt of gratitude for sleeping at my place when he and I decided to experiment with DEC and HP network ideas.