A love letter to Hewlett-Packard

About 18 years ago I dropped out of graduate school at Stanford and took a job as an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard Company.  Actually, "dropped out" is a bit too strong of a phrase; it was late June, I had just just won my Stanford undergraduate degrees a few weeks before, I was about to start my summer internship at NASA, it was hot out, and my new dorm room (Rains housing, for those of you in the know) was even hotter, and I was already sick of hearing cars downshifting for the stop sign just outside of my window.  Classes for my masters program in mechanical engineering wouldn't start for a few more months, but the prospect of yet another math class didn't feel like a Big Idea to me.  I forget the the exact chain of events, but I believe I first called Ford to ask (beg) for the job I had turned down a few months earlier, and then coincidentally someone from Hewlett-Packard called me to see if I would be interested in a position with them up in Vancouver, Washington, having passed their grueling phone interview screen a few months earlier.

So. 

I flew up to Portland, Oregon to interview with Hewlett-Packard, partly because I was desperate to get out of my room at Stanford and partly because I had never been to a CART race, and there was one happening the coming weekend, which was June 27 (what — you think I've changed?  This one-track mind has taken years to develop).  The job interviews went well, and the race was pretty cool (the good folks at Hewlett-Packard allowed me to keep the rental car for the weekend), if I must say so:

The visit went well, I took the job, and in doing so became a very proud member of the Hewlett-Packard family, starting as a R&D Engineer working on ink-jet printing systems.  I enjoyed what in retrospect was an amazing two years, though I probably didn't fully appreciate everything at the time because I was relatively impatient from a career standpoint.  All things being equal, over my two years there, I was able to do foundational R&D work on what became HP's "off-axis" ink system (which you can stilll find in any large-format printer today), got to help take a new printer up the manufacturing ramp, was allowed to redesign a bunch of parts for another new printer, and was also asked to do some cool user research in the field, including one home visit in Wisconsin where I ended up helping some kids with their homework. 

The best thing about working at Hewlett-Packard was its culture, which was very "adult" in the sense that it was built on a sense of deep trust and respect between individuals and groups within the company.  One day I was using spray-mount glue in my cubicle (bad idea) and my manager stopped by, poked his head in, and said something to the effect of "You can pretty much do anything you want here unless you're endangering yourself or others, and right now you're endangering yourself or others," and then he walked away.  Lesson learned.  Working at Hewlett-Packard meant that I had the good fortune of working for some truly spectacular managers and mentors, such as Eric Ahlvin, Alan Shibata, David Gast, and Rick Berriman.  Looking back on my time there, I realize now the degree to which I imprinted on these people and on Hewett-Packard's culture.  In my approach to work and working with people, I think I've tried hard to live up to the examples they set for me, as well as the ethos that informed the culture of Hewlett-Packard. 

The best summary of the culture I experienced at Hewlett-Packard is summed up in the 11 Simple Rules drawn up by David Packard himself.  These are:

1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be "a breeze."

2. Build up the other person's sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along with him.

3. Respect the other man's personality rights. Respect as something sacred the other fellow's right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.

4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical "phony" who stoops to it.

5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.

6. Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn't want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him to embrace a higher working goal — a standard, an ideal — and he will do his own "making over" far more effectively than you can do it for him.

7. Try to understand the other person. How would you react to similar circumstances? When you begin to see the "whys" of him you can't help but get along better with him.

8. Check first impressions. We are especially prone to dislike some people on first sight because of some vague resemblance (of which we are usually unaware) to someone else whom we have had reason to dislike. Follow Abraham Lincoln's famous self-instruction: "I do not like that man; therefore I shall get to know him better."

9. Take care with the little details. Watch your smile, your tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the way you greet people, the use of nicknames and remembering faces, names and dates. Little things add polish to your skill in dealing with people. Constantly, deliberately think of them until they become a natural part of your personality.

10. Develop genuine interest in people. You cannot successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have a sincere desire to like, respect and be helpful to others. Conversely, you cannot build genuine interest in people until you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in an atmosphere characterized by mutual liking and respect.

11. Keep it up. That's all — just keep it up!

Wow.  These 11 principles are simultaneously super inspirational and super humbling.  Truth be told, on my bad days I fail to live up to all of these.  But I try, and I keep trying to improve myself vis a vis this list, and I think that was the magic of Hewlett-Packard's culture, which allowed you — even encouraged you — to improve yourself just as you were always trying to improve the stuff sitting on your test bench.  And it encouraged you to help the folks around you, too.  What I find interesting about Packard's points is that, starting with No.1, they're all focused on the people around you, not on your inner dialog or whatever.  If you're seeking to establish and maintain a collaborative, innovative culture, you could do a lot worse than to follow these 11 points.

I wrote this post this evening because earlier today I learned that David Kelley modeled much of IDEO's culture on that of Hewlett-Packard.  I left Hewlett-Packard to join IDEO, and in many ways I regard IDEO as a logical extension of Packard's cultural vision.  Trust and respect for your fellow colleagues are indeed the pillars of cultures which routinely create high-impact innovations.

Many thanks to my friend Bob Sutton for telling me about David Packard's Simple Rules.

Stanford Magazine on the Stanford d.school

Stanford's alumni magazine, titled — you guessed it! — Stanford Magazine, ran a great story on the d.school a few weeks ago.  The article speaks with my teacher/mentor/colleague/friend/hero David Kelley and others about not only the d.school, but on living your life well, and on the notion of achieving creative confidence (here's a secret: those last two items are deeply related).

It's definitely worth your time to read through the article.  I really liked this quote from Stanford President John Hennessy:

Creativity represents an important characteristic that we would seek to inculcate in our students, and obviously one that's harder to put a firm framework around.  It's unlike teaching some analytical method. Will a bridge stay up? Well, we know what to teach. You teach physics, you teach some mathematics and you can do the analysis.

It's much harder to teach creativity. [It involves] multiple routes, multiple approaches and, obviously, it's virtually impossible to test whether or not you've succeeded. The measure of success is likely to come long after, not unlike many of the other things we try to teach: To prepare students to be educated citizens, to prepare them for dealing with people from diverse and different walks of life. Those are things that play out over a long time, whether or not we've done a good job.

During my time as an undergraduate at Stanford, I was very fortunate to be able to pursue two degrees, obtaining both a bachelor of science in engineering and a bachelor of arts in a multidisciplinary program called Values, Technology, Science and Society [VTSS] (it is now called STS and is one of the biggest programs on campus, though when I was there it was quite small).  I spent a lot of time in the library.  Though VTSS sounds like something very technical in nature, it was actually an incredibly rich humanities experience, with a focus on topics which, if you've spent any time around this blog, you know that I love.  For example, my honors thesis was on the origins and development of the Ferrari aesthetic, looking at how meaning was created in Maranello via the mechanisms of storytelling, racing, and panel beating.  My VTSS teachers were an incredible group of people, really inspirational, and they helped me build up my creative confidence in myriad ways.  VTSS also gave me a way to take all of the product design classes with David Kelley which I otherwise would not have been able to do had I just pursued my engineering degree alone. 

I bring all of this up because I do feel that Professor Kelley helped, in Hennessy's words, to prepare me to be an educated citizen, to prepare me for dealing with people from diverse and different walk of life.  If the d.school had been around while I was there, I wouldn't have had to get the two degrees (though I would have anyway, as I'm always "doing both").  For me, as someone who was part of the founding team at the d.school, and who remains extremely passionate and optimistic about its mission and potential in the world — it is an experiment still in its very early days — it's very gratifying to see that mission be couched in these terms.  Ultimately, we are not teaching folks to be designers, we are helping them realize their potential as citizens and as happy, productive human beings.  Awesome.

I'll leave you with this recent d.school video which has students telling it all in their own words:

d.school bootcamp: the student experience from Stanford d.school

John on TED

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I returned this morning from the TED conference in Long Beach.  This year I found it exceptionally inspiring.  And also draining: the content on stage, the people you meet, the people you don't meet,the locale, all of the activites — it's a jam-packed five days that leaves you feeling simultaneously energized yet also a bit like a spent tube of toothpaste.  Wow. 

I logged on this evening to write a summary of the week, but in the course of seeing what my friends wrote about their experience there, I came across John's amazing story of his experience in Long Beach, and decided that all I'm going to do is quote him here.  What he wrote is just beautiful, and it captures the essence of what happens there:

… Every time I go, there are at least a couple of experiences that I have that change the way that I look at the world, the way that I want to be when I go home. TED makes you want to be better, smarter, more present, more thoughtful, more impactful, more human. To be a better citizen and a better professional and a better dad and a better husband and a better friend. That type of inspiration doesn’t happen all that much, and it’s worth the price of admission every time.

And that’s why June Cohen and Tom Rielly, on the TED team are two of my true heroes. They both have chosen to spend their lives working on building up TED outside of just the week of the conference every year. Tom has built the TED Fellows program, which started out pretty damn great and at this point is starting to move into basically ass-kicking-terrifyingly-awesome territory. And June, who put TED Talks online for everyone to see, including subtitling into 80+ languages.

That, my friends, is how you change the world.

That’s how you take this beautiful, wonderful experience for a few people in California each year and turn it into something that anyone — anyone! — can use to make themselves, their community, their world better themselves.

Well said, John.  I can't wait to post some of my favorite speaker videos.  I had tears streaming down my face in just about every session of the conference. 

TED is something different from what it was half a decade ago.  If you can ever go in person to one of their events, or to a TEDx event, I heartily recommend you do so, but I do agree with John that the essence of the TED brand experience is by no means limited to those who hear it in person.  If you can take the time to watch and absorb the videos which appeal to you — and many of those which won't at first glance — you can have the same kind of transformational experience.  Perhaps even better. 

Tears optional, but highly recommended.

A conversation with Jörg Bergmeister about interface design, the new Porsche 911 hybrid, and making green more red

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If nothing else, working on metacool over the past half decade has helped me meet a ton of people I would never have encountered otherwise.  And thanks to another friend I met via metacool, I recently had the great pleasure of meeting Jörg Bergmeister, one of the most talent racing drivers working today.

Those of you out there whose eyes roll back in your head whenever I talk about cars can rest easy (relaaaxxx — let those eyes roll baaackkk), because when Jörg and I met, we didn't talk about automobiles so much as about human-machine interface design and how new technologies may reshape the dominant paradigms of automotive design surrounding us today.  Our specific topic of discussion was the amazing new Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid, and yes we did geek out a bit on gearhead stuff at the beginning of our interview, but on the whole I think we ventured in to some very interesting territory.  In fact, we touched on many of the themes I surfaced in this post I wrote a while back about making green red.

By the way, have I mentioned how totally gnarly Jörg's 911 looks?

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My favorite part of our conversation came when I asked Jörg about how he stays inspired, and his answer was just wonderful:

Racing is the one thing I love — well, not the only thing, but I've
done it my entire life and it has been my hobby and I made it my
profession. I'm very fortunate to make my hobby my profession. I think
that's enough inspiration. I just love, love racing.

Words of wisdom.  Can you make your hobby your profession, and achieve a "cold fusion" state of permanent personal inspiration.  What a way to remain always inspired!  I love it.

By the way, have you ever noticed how much the nose of a modern 911 looks like the skull of the ur-land animal Tiktaalik

Tiktaalik_skull_front

Yeah, me too.

11 blogs I dig

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Hi.  I was recently asked by the nice folks over at blogs.com to come up with a Top 10 list. 

I have lots of favorite blogs.  You can see a few of them here to the right of this page, and many more gnarly ones over at Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness.  It was actually difficult to come up with a Top 10 list because I like so many different blogs, but after some serious procrastination I whittled it down to ten… or eleven.

Top 10 Metacool Blogs

Enjoy!

photo credit: Russell Davies

All quiet at metacool, but not so quiet!

Hi there!

Things have been a bit quiet here at metacool over the past few weeks.  While I've been busy dealing in gnarlyness over at my other blog, I haven't forgotten about the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life. 

In fact, I've recently written two articles which might be of interest to y'all:

Why Design Matters,  BusinessWeek

Is that a Porsche in your pocket?,  Aol Autos

I'll be writing more about metacool-ish topics in the world of transportation for Aol Autos in the coming months, and maybe more at BusinessWeek, too.  Writing essays like these is not at all like the process of blogging (at least for me), so it was great to have great editorial help from Helen and Reilly to help me along the way.

A tribute to friends and friendship

At the end of the film Truth in 24, Howden Haynes (race winner Tom Kristensen's race engineer) admits that his team's victory has left him emotionally numb: he's not elated, he's not sad, he's just kind of there, hovering above his elated peers, not able to experience everything you'd expect him to be feeling after having guided his drivers to an underdog victory over the course of 24 grueling hours at Le Mans.  I've seen the movie many times (it's my favorite bit of in-flight entertainment), but I could never quite understand why Haynes reacted that way to what seemed to be a peak life moment.  But thanks to some friends, the last week of my life has been horizon-expanding, and to be honest, somewhat overwhelming from an emotional standpoint: which brings me to this past Thursday evening, where I found myself sitting in my Beijing hotel room thinking "how in the world did that just happen, and how come I feel this numb?".  Now I have a sense of why Haynes felt the way he did, and let me tell you why.

A week ago I hopped on a plane to Beijing to be a spectator at the Race of Champions (RoC).  My carry-on luggage consisted largely of one Arai helmet stuffed full of nomex balaclava, and one Amazon Kindle filled up with the latest and greatest reads in business and innovation.  Truth be told, I was so excited to finally be headed to RoC that I could hardly read any of those books — so instead I spent the flight with my eyes glued to the afore-mentioned Truth in 24, watching my heroes Kristensen and Pirro (who would be racing at RoC) race their way through the French countryside.  I kept thinking about my helmet up top, too, because ever since I was a boy I had wanted a racing helmet, and now I had one, and thanks to my friends it looked pretty killer, too.  Wasn't sure if I was going to get to use it in Beijing, and knew that it was overkill to bring my own when there were plenty of loaner helmets waiting there for me, but I just felt like I wanted it to be this way.

Upon landing, I embarked on a three-day blitz of totally engrossing automotive experiences.  I met a bunch of my racing heroes, and even got to break bread with them.  I made a bunch of new friends.  I got to tour the Forbidden City with the future of Western capitalism.  And I got some seriously good rides.

Jean Jennings, an automotive journalist I've been reading since the days when my mode of transportation was a pimped-out Mongoose BMX bike, once wrote that she took up being a co-driver in rallies when she realized that a professional race car pilot could give her a better racing experience than she could get at the wheel herself.  That was certainly my experience in Beijing, where I was fortunate enough to ride along with the following kinesthetic geniuses:

Diego Rodriguez & Sebastian Vettel, Race of Champions 2009
Sebastian Vettel

Diego Rodriguez & Andy Priaulx, Race of Champions 2009 

Andy Priaulx

Diego Rodriguez & Michael Schumacher, Race of Champions 2009
Michael Schumacher

For whatever, reason, all of the planets aligned at the end of Wednesday evening's Race of Champions shoot-out, and in space of five minutes I went from being a jet-lagged spectator to sitting beside a very focused Michael Schumacher as he warmed up our orange X-Bow in anticipation of the final against the amazing Mattias Ekstrom.  After a couple of warmup laps, and then three laps driven in anger, "we" came in second:

Coverage of my race with Schumacher starts at the 2:56:00 mark on the video (my race with Priaulx is at 0:55:30). 

The race itself was amazing, feeling like one seamless set of control inputs on the part of Schumacher as we flowed our way around the track.  We lost by just a few tenths, but man was it a great run on this part.  My abiding memory will be from our cooldown lap, when Schumacher turned to me with a twinkle in his eye and we both shared a laugh at the site of Ekstrom doing a massive stalled burnout against the barrier.  Upon stopping, we shook hands and that was that.

So all of this is why I found myself in my hotel room getting ready for the post-race party, and — somewhat Hayne-like — simultaneously feeling ecstatic, happy, and dumbfounded.  My heart was yelling "DUDE! TOTAL UNABASHED GEARHEAD GNARLYNESS!!!!!!!!!!" and my brain was saying "wait a second, did that just happen… and with these guys??!!???…".  Soul-mind dissonance.  Sitting at home at my keyboard today, of course, I'm totally happy, grateful and thankful to have had this amazing life experience.

My intent in writing this post wasn't to toot my horn in public about my blessings, nor was my intention to process my emotions in public.  I just needed to write all of this in order to get to a point where I could express my sincere thanks to a whole bunch of special people, and to have you understand why they mean so much to me.

So, here is a public "thank you" to all of the folks who made my time in Beijing so special and memorable, in no particular order:  Paul, Martin, Andy, Michele, Travis, Fredrik, Tanner, Owen, Marie-Helene, Tess, Cris, Mattias, Brian, and… many others.

Most of all, though, I want to give a big, heartfelt thanks to Jim Hancock.  Jim was the one who invited me to RoC, and he did many things big and small make my time there truly remarkable.  Jim and I met several years ago via metacool, and I've learned a tremendous amount from him since then.  Not only is he one of the most intuitive, natural marketers I've ever met, he's also an extremely generous and fun person to be around.  Above all, he's a pure racer, and I will be forever grateful for this Race of Champions experience, which let me feel like a racer, too.

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Dreams can come true — you just need a little help from your friends. 

Thank you Jim, from the bottom of my heart.

The future of NPR

Npr digital think in

And now for something not-so-completely-different, on Friday I'm participating in a Digital Think In for National Public Radio.  A group of us are going to spend the day formulating and envisioning a digital media strategy for NPR.  I'm really excited, as there's going to be some juicy business design involved, especially as we work with issues around the "social", "open", and "platform" aspects of their service.

Anyhow, if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them — please drop me an email or leave a comment.  The official Twitter hashtag for the event will be #NPRthink, and of course you can always find me at @metacool.

Hope to see you on Twitter!