Joe,
What a wonderful advantage you have to work in an environment where
something like the HP Way is embedded into the culture.
I have worked for both WordPerfect and Novell, and found the lack of
"values" to be a hinderance to the success and effectiveness of both
organizations.
My best friend was a VP at WordPerfect (he actually hired me). One night
at dinner he said to me, "You know, the problem, Ben, is that the
employees just don't understand WordPerfect's beliefs." I said, "Yep, and
I'm one of them. Why don't you explain it to me." He did his best, but, in
the end, he didn't understand them either.
Last year I was giving a presentation to my division and I asked a simple
question: "How many people in this room know what Novell's values are?" No
one raised their hand. Then I asked, "How many people have personal
values?" Every hand in the room was raised. I followed it by asking, "How
many people use their personal values to make decisions every day?" Nearly
every hand was raised. One guy, who sensed where I was leading shouted,
"How are we supposed to know what to do within Novell if we don't even
know what we value?"
That started quite a discussion. Unfortunately I was not in a position to
do anything about it. It was a great discussion that lead absolutely
nowhere.
-- Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.com http://www.enol.com/~bcomptonLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>