“We were just opportunistic,” said Hewlett. “We did anything to bring in a nickel. We made a bowling alley foul-line indicator, a clock drive for a telescope, a thing to make a urinal flush automatically, and a shock machine to make people lose weight.”
To outsiders, and even to their own staff on occasion, Hewlett and Packard could have seemed like just your average friendly college buddies. Indeed, when the company began to experience modest success, one newspaper ran a story on its two founders under the headline, “Boy Scouts on a Rampage.” But despite their seemingly compassionate natures and generous human resource management policies, Hewlett and Packard were in business to make a buck. And, when it came down to it, they were willing to do whatever it took to get on top.
In 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon appointed Packard as the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense. It was a role Packard thrived in until 1971, when he realized that the company he had co-founded was in trouble. Packard resigned from his government post and returned to HP as chairman of the board.
HP was suffering from extreme cash-flow shortfalls. The management at the time had decided to borrow $100 million in long-term debt to cover the company. But Hewlett and Packard, both of whom had witnessed the disastrous effects of the Depression first-hand, refused to finance their growth with anything other than profits.
Almost immediately, Packard set out on a company-wide tour, in which he planned to lay down the law. At the company’s plant in Santa Rosa, Packard gather together all of the employees and lined up the division managers in front of them. “If they don’t get inventories under control, they’re not going to be your managers for very long,” Packard told the workers. It was just one of many incidents that would come to be known as “Dave Gives ’Em Hell Speeches.” It worked, however.
Within six months, the company had turned itself around and even had a $40 million cash surplus.
Hewlett and Packard wanted to create an environment based on egalitarianism and openness, but they also knew when the time came to be the boss. It was that spirit and nerve that both looked for in others. They wanted to be working with people who had the gumption to go for what they wanted.
That is why when 12 year old Steve Jobs, future co-founder of Apple Computer, looked up Hewlett in the phone book and decided to call him at home one day to ask him for spare parts for a school project, Hewlett did not hang up; he listened. Jobs was trying to find spare parts for a frequency counter, and what better way to get it than to call up the HP co-founder himself, he thought. At first, Hewlett could only laugh at the bravery of this young boy. But by the time Jobs hung up, he not only had a promise for the parts he needed, but he also found himself with a summer job at HP.
HP was a company founded on ambition and pure guts, and that is what Hewlett and Packard looked for in the rest of their team.
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