Nothing new there. Good to hear that top level finally sobered up. I've worked at HP from 2005-2006 (roughly) as an extern, and was always fascinated by its lack of a main corporate agenda, lest a vision. Remember, back then, they even used to sell HP branded iPods (by means of a strange deal with Apple that I'll never really understand) (http://www.fscklog.com/hpipodback.JPG).
And the sad part is we all know what the problem is, because its always the same problem (more or less) everywhere
Put Designers and Thinkers on top ... not project managers and follow uppers
Those who get promoted and run large organization are almost always not the smart designer thinker type, but the project manager, follow upper with a good spirit and cute time management skills
Apple also recently picked a project manager on top, lets see if i will be proven right AAPL close today at 666.8 (cute number) I think it will go back to 30 USD in half the time it took it to go up from there (AAPL was selling for 30 USD in 2004)
I do not understand why you assume that project managers are not thinkers and have no vision. Are you considering Project Managers are simply mindless robots following a tracking sheet? That's very different from the project managers I have been working with. And project managers are, by definition, NEVER at the top, since they are at the working level managing upcoming projects.
The problem is rather the lack of performance metrics. In all the successful companies I have been in, there was a strong correlation between success and the ability to measure progress from month to month, from quarter to quarter and year to year. When such things are missing, then you are pretty much depending on the goodwill and expertise of all employees, and usually this fails sooner or later.
In someway I think we agree when you say "project managers, are, by definition, NEVER at the top"
What I am saying is, that when they do reach the top, and in many many organization they do, they use the same skill set that helped them become very good project managers to lead an organization, and manage the future of its products
And as you said, by definition this doesn't work
What I am also saying, which is very sad, many organization structure their performance evaluation process around favoring Project Managers and eventually pushing them to the top
If you put only designers in charge of any kind of a project or organization, you just end up with a different kind of disaster. Look at GNOME 3, for instance. It was a design-led initiative. It failed to produce usable software, it failed to attract any new users, and it actually managed to drive away an absolutely huge number of existing GNOME users. As it stands, it is one of the worst OSS disasters we've seen yet.
You need a balanced team. That's the only way to truly succeed.
Anecdotally, gnome 3 attracted me. I now run a Ubuntu system, but I haven't switched my main desktop to Ubuntu because Mac OS X is still better (for me).
"it's been over 7 years since we've had a new lineup of multifunction printers,"
I have one of those 7 year old MFPs and it has worked great, but HP has kindly sent me a new replacement printer because of a cartridge issue I've had in the last few months. The new printer is three "generations" newer, looks great, has a few new features, but has significant operating flaws like paper jams and crashing my brand new (2 week old) laptop and a year old desktop.
Already spent three hours on the phone with HP tech support with the new printer, after five plus hours on the phone with the old printer, and really learning how much they need to either be retrained (or trained to begin with, why do I have to explain what duplex means) or re-shore them to North America. Already been escalated, now waiting for a local case manager to call back. But I know that means sending me a new printer, instead of trying to fix this unit, because they don't do tech support here.
I have a HP LaserJet 4100 series at home which I bought several years ago on eBay for < $200. It's amazingly reliable and cheap to print with due to an abundance of 3rd party toner cartridges -- not that it matters much when we average perhaps a couple hundred pages a month in usage. Perhaps this device is so old that it emerged from HP's old school engineering culture?
My dad only recently retired his old HP Laserjet 4 after almost 20 years of use. I remember using it when his desktop computer was running Windows 3.1. With a little maintenance that we did ourselves that printer remained a workhorse for the family for an unthinkable amount of time. I would love to see HP return to that level of quality.
HP business-level B&W lasers have, for the most part, stayed pretty good. Especially the older 4100 series, which is one of my favorite. Older B&W laser drivers were great, newer ones are usually still good.
For color laser I often go with Xerox, for inkjet AIO I go with Brother. I've had far too many multi-hour sessions dealing with HP AIO software and drivers.
HP standalone inkjet printers can be good, but it seems no one buys non-AIO inkjets anymore.
They're fine. HP is probably gearing up for a big bath next year, in which they can bundle their losses/liabilities from several years in one year, and then look more profitable in years to come.
I say this because HP has the largest marketshare globally (17.2%), and has cornered the U.S. government contracts with elitebooks.
A better indicator of how well HP is doing would be their revenue relative to the industry and relative to the past years. Unlike profits, revenue numbers are harder to manipulate - and HP revenue is up 11% since 2009.
An ex-graduate of my University came to give a talk in 2003 about his job with HP, and he seemed unable to tell the difference between revenue and profit! Hence, HP had a 'profit' of $51 billion rather than a 'revenue' of $51 billion.
It must be extremely frustrating to have been an old-time HP engineer or product designer. To watch the company transition from an innovative technology company to a gigantic services and ink firm with no breakthrough products for, well, over a decade now. And to know that inside the walls of the company HP had early products that weren't too different from the iPhone, or even 3D printers, but made a conscious decision to do nothing with them and to effectively stop working on disruptive innovation.
I'm always fascinated by these sorts of reboot things. Many people have experienced 'The Purge' where a new CEO is brought in and the 'old guard' is moved out of the way and the 'new guard' is brought into replace it. Its human nature I think to change leadership that way. But its fraught with peril. In particular its dangerous if you do it several times then after a few purges you don't have enough people who have the skills to lead to pick from.
To pick an example from recent memory, look at Apple during its great withering. Sculley -> Spindler -> Amelio -> Jobs. Looking at how Jobs re-created that company from the inside out was fascinating.
I don't know if Meg Whitman can accomplish that much but she has the basic resource. HP's expertise is wide and deep. I wish her luck.
Jobs had the benefit of a relatively huge amount of credibility with the rank-and-file employees and management, of a very compelling vision to execute on (the transition to OS X and then post-PC computing), and the focus to bring it to fruition.
It's not clear whether Meg Whitman shares any of those benefits, nor if the desperation of her company's board is to the point that they might give her the level of leeway afforded Jobs at the time.
I'm assuming Whitman has a pretty impressive rolodex as well.
But HP doesn't need to swing for the fences like Apple did. They need someone to create focus. HP has too many product lines, is in too many markets, and hasn't had a huge amount of cost discipline for a long time. Whitman can fix HP just by being a competent CEO, assuming she has the support of the board.
I think HP has major problems, many of which stem from the board of directors. The fact that the BoD selected Léo Apotheker is one of the biggest indicators of this. Hiring Meg Whitman will not fix HP if the BoD stays.
I bet she's a woman who is already too rich and powerful to go down without a fight. HP needed her much more than she needed HP. I can't imagine that she'd put up with nonsense given her power -- the ability to walk away and likely tank the stock. Someone without fuck-you money might stick around and compromise. However, she must either be doing this to cement her legacy as a successful CEO or for a massive increase in wealth. Accepting mediocrity doesn't allow her to achieve either.
From the outside, looking in, HP appears to have tremendous infrastructural problems that at this point are no longer a matter of "We haven't been using a compelling customer management or CRM system for years". (I know that wasn't the only point in the article; still, it seemed like an odd one to have there at all given what we see of HP.)
HP's printers are ... OK. Not exceptional, not market leaders, but OK. But, their printer driver and AIO software is renowned in the tech industry for its awfulness. It is truly, exceptionally terrible. One of the strangest workstation issues we ever had to diagnose was caused by a messed-up HP software installation, where the HP drivers for one printer interfered with the HP drivers for another printer (http://www.robsheldon.com/puzzlepage).
HP's had multiple consumer laptop lines with a stupid overheating issue which consistently cooks the graphics chip almost exactly 14 months after purchase, due not to a manufacturing defect but a design flaw. (A thermal pad is being used in a space which is too large for a thermal pad -- there are seriously guys on eBay making decent side money selling copper shims for these things.)
We recently had an HP AIO workstation in the shop with a bad BIOS. The chip seemed fine, but the BIOS software had become corrupted (possibly due to a virus attempting to re-flash BIOS, although I haven't heard of that actually being tried in quite a while). On a Dell system, this is an easy problem to fix: we go to Dell's services & support page, enter the service tag number of the system, hit drivers & downloads, select the BIOS flashing utility, download and run and done. HP? Not on their website, and their technical support -- while sympathetic -- couldn't help either. They literally had no BIOS flashing utility for that model. Our customer, a student, was out several hundred dollars on an otherwise fine computer because of that.
We've been making a point of warning our clients away from HP for years because this kind of crap just keeps happening over and over and over. They'll call us asking for a recommendation on a new system, we'll give them some specific options, and if it sounds like they want to go shopping, literally we'll say, "Just don't buy an HP, whatever you do."
What a shame. HP used to have a well-deserved sterling reputation. I have no idea what their enterprise business looks like, but it's hard for me to imagine a consumer line being that through-and-through screwed up without also corrupting the enterprise side.
I honestly was relieved -- and heard the same from a number of other support-level companies -- when scuttlebutt had it that HP was going to get out of the consumer market. I think they should have stuck with that plan, scrapped their PC business entirely, gotten the rest of their higher-profit-margin business back in order, and then a few years later re-launched their PC business when they could do it right and without all of the added baggage of a stinky reputation.
They obviously have more data and information to predict the future, but to me this sounds like a death march. The general has to tell the troops "We'll Win! Attack!" while everyone can sort of see the end is near and this is a losing battle.
