New Comm Biz

6 months ago I was pleasantly surprised at all the encouraging words I received after announcing that my life as an indie artist was over. Working at HP has been a huge shift for me. After a few months on the job I told my manager:

I feel like I’m being asked to play chess on a backgammon board

I know new media, I understand all the intricacies of Web 2.0, I didn’t know HP or how things get done “on the inside”.

First off I should say that things at HP are going much better than expected. My mangers, for the most part, give me my budget and leave me alone to do my job. Once we’ve set our strategic goals they trust me to find a way to get it done. They’re there when I need help navigating the waters of corporate paperwork and when I need a manger to run interference from deadline delaying anti-bodies but other than that I’m left to my own devices. Which is exactly the way I like it (insert maniacal laughter).

HP is the subject of many a case study for a reason. It’s been very successful. It has a very strong culture. It’s influence created the bay area into the tech hub that it is today. And it’s huge. HP became the first IT company to cross the $100 Billion mark. HP currently employs somewhere around 180,000 people worldwide, and that doesn’t count all the contractors and agencies who rely on HP for the bulk of their revenue (and from what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t be surprised if that equated into easily another 180,000 people).

Like any company it’s size, HP can be difficult to navigate. Rules, requirements and paperwork have been put into place to save the company tens of millions of dollars a year. Those same procedures can make it difficult (sometimes nearly impossible) to get your job done. It’s especially difficult when you’re trying to do things that haven’t been done before in an area that doesn’t have it’s own procedures in place yet, like Web 2.0.

The Blogosphere saved me

One of my greatest strengths is my ability to network. Maybe it comes from growing up around politicians or my sincere interest in people, but I’m a natural networker. HP has given me a huge new playing field to use that skill set.

But some of the biggest help in learning the ropes has been from other bloggers. Pete aka Nerd Guru is a fellow blogger I met several months before joining HP, but in his role as Chief Architect for HP.com and as a long time employee at HP he has proven to be a wealth of information and resource for many referrals. A more recent addition to my HP/blog network is David over at MuchoSalsa. David works in the department that holds all of HP by the jugular; procurement.

Recently when trying to figure out why a much needed project got killed by IT, despite having all the right approval, Pete and David were both able to add insight that helped me escalate the issue up the right channels. In the end the project got put back on track and I don’t know who exactly was responsible (there were a lot of us escalating the issue) but having those two there to explain the finer points to me helped make my argument more salient.

If I had to say what the biggest challenge is working at HP is? It’s that fact that it’s a big publicly traded company. And every big publicly traded company has to make tradeoffs. Those tradeoffs create friction, not just inside the company but also outside the company. Tradeoffs that may make the shareholders ecstatic, may not make your employees or customers happy. And in today’s world of consumer controlled conversations that creates challenges.

If I had to say what the best thing is about working at HP is? It’s that HP already get’s why Web 2.0, social media marketing and new media are important. I’m not having to convince management that this is something we should be doing, I’m working with management trying to figure out what makes the most sense for HP to invest in.

In future posts I want to breakdown some specific examples of what we’ve been doing and the pro’s and con’s but this is enough for now. I know I have several HP employees reading this and I would invite them to chime in with there thoughts.

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