Foreword

The Intrepid Empowerment Visionary-Barbara Waugh

When I hired on at HP on Jan 1, 1958, the employee diversity could be counted on one hand, Art Fong, George Kan, Jane Evans. Their work society reflected WWII organizational strategy, white men throughout management and technology levels of the company. Indeed many of those employees came directly from the war effort years, Bill Hewlett, Bruce Wholey and Al Bagley were all veterans. And that mentality prevailed in the hiring and concept of organization.

Oh, there were plenty of women employees, the production lines were mostly women, including the one exception of management sensitivity I can remember, the House Mother. She was charged with a responsibility much like that of a college sorority house mother, helping with the social issues of all those young women. Maybe some line supervisors were women. There were essentially no minorities.

But there was also a mentality issue within HP too, a mixture of machismo and misogyny. I ran into it a few years later, when our Stanford Park Division held an off-site annual review over at Half Moon Bay, about 50 divisional mid-managers. On the final morning, Division Manager Al Seely asked if there were any final matters we missed? I stood up and observed that looking around the room I saw about 50 attendees, of which only 5 were women. I suggested to Al that he assign each of his 5 dept. managers a task for the coming year of finding and mentoring and promoting one woman, and bringing her next year. Which would bring the women attendees next year to 10. Al hemmed and hawed a bit and called for coffee. As I waited in the coffee line, two old-timer lab guys (and good friends) came up behind me, and barked, "HOW DARE YOU! This is a meritocracy, you serve your time, before managing."

In the 1970s and 80s, HP got better at diversity hiring, and Barbara Waugh landed the Personnel/Recruiting job in the Santa Clara Division in 1984.. Barbara's book, with the editing and writing efforts of co-author Margot Silk Forrest, a former HP technical writer, is a fascinating remembrance for an old man like me, who lived HP history of the early days. Barbara's organizing talents began to show quickly, and you just have to read about her clever methods for minority hiring in her Santa Clara chapter to see what a fertile mind along with her unlikely partners can do, in a company like HP which rewards ideas.

Her reward was promotion to the Corporate Recruiting Office where, in partnership with Emily Duncan, the VP of Diversity, for the first time, HP achieved the diversity hiring targets. She was then promoted to Personnel Manager in HP Labs. NOW, it's going to get even more interesting. With a doctorate in psychology and organizational behavior, a master's degree in theology (Theology??) and comparative literature, and a past as a political activist, she seemed an unlikely candidate for a high-tech conclave of nerds like the HPLabs of the 1980s. But somehow it all combined to make her what her boss called "the conscience of HP," as the HPL worldwide change manager and co-founder of World e-inclusion.

Her story reads like a mystery, with quick turns, unexpected activity, serendipity, and a widening network of in-and-out of company friends and social activists. In 1988, there had been the first HP-sponsored Technical Women's Conference (TWC), chaired by HP Labs engineer Darlene Solomon (now CTO of Agilent). For the 1991 event, Barbara was looking for funding for 800 attendees, when word came down to cancel due to a business recession. She eventually successfully appeals for an exception, but as one engineer, quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal opined, that while that meeting of industrial/technical women was considered highly successful, it was still true that EVERY day in industry is a Men's conference. But you have to read her story and cheer for her successes as you read her journey against the background intellectual culture of one of the nation's pre-eminent research labs. After she found funding, the 1991 conference was even more successful.

It is almost magical to read through so many examples of how her mind worked, often with posing tough questions and just listening. For example, after several years of impressive results aimed at HP Labs becoming the world's best industrial research lab, Barb sensed the energy dissipating, employees and managers slipping into same old same old. "What would make you excited to come to work in the morning?" she asked all over the place. And it was Laurie Mittelstadt, an engineer, who provided a response that lit everyone up, "I'd be excited to come to work at the best industrial research lab FOR the world!" Reading that amazing alternative, I was dumbstruck, as were the people back then who realized just how the direction of the Labs should be focused towards a world of customer needs. From this new mission came the program, "HP for the World," and many technical breakthroughs outlined in the book. The graphic created to inspire the new mission most of us remember. Created by senior scientist Sid Liebes and administrative assistant Rhonda Kirk, it shows Dave and Bill opening the doors of the Addison garage, revealing the world within. Bill and Dave signed the poster, one of their last employee activities.

The well-respected Grameen Foundation, founded in 1997, was inspired by the work of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. It became the Grameen Bank and a global leader in the fight against poverty. Grameen Bank began as a radical experiment to lend $27 U.S. to a group of 42 basket weavers in Bangladesh on the strength of their character alone. The women not only repaid the loan, but they also made a small profit. The bedrock principle behind GB is that the poor are lacking in resources but not trustworthiness or financial sensibility. They had recently passed the $1 billion mark of recycled microloans. As you might suspect, Barbara knew Yunus, and soon was asking everybody even bigger questions. Is there any way that a technology giant like HP can envision itself helping the 4-billion people in the world who are on the bare-subsistence level? If there were ways that technology could bootstrap their brainpower to improve their condition, for networking, work output, healthcare, on-line education, could there be a way that that vast number become HP customers? With that kind of thinking, HP's work becomes more than just making donations of money and equipment, you view them as future customers. Carly grasped the concept and soon embraced it, and in no time, signed an MOU with Grameen, appointed VP Lyle Hurst to head it up, and e-inclusion came out of the skunkworks as a corporate initiative.

The e-I team explored how current HP technology might be organized and deployed to benefit the poorest of the poor and also tap huge markets made profitable not by margin but by volume. Another project with the former prime minister of Costa Rica, headed up by Jayna Sheats, created community "cyber-centers," housed in rehabbed shipping containers, offering internet connectivity, run with solar cells, and moved into the center of poor, rural communities.

By the end of the book, as so many employees have experienced through the decade, one has no doubts that HP really does have a Soul that can inspire technology.

An HP Labs engineer, one of the Vietnamese "boat people" who escaped to the United States, got an education, and was doing well at HP, came to talk with Barbara. He had unsuccessfully donated quite a lot of money to an orphanage back home, but it had been confiscated. After their conversation, she sent him away with instructions on how to find other people in that HP Vietnam community, plus a list of names of people she knew who might act politically. That man became empowered to lead his cause himself even though he had never considered it, and really made a difference. One long last chapter delineated all of the "Tools for Revolutionaries" she developed over her 25 HP-years. FINALLY-It is with a great deal of pleasure that I applaud Barbara for becoming our SECOND HPMemoir woman contributor, Betty Haines being the first back in 2012. I hope we don't have to wait very long for more HP women to offer their HP life stories. Barb has invited a number of women who will invite more!

As you will begin reading Barbara's book, you will note that it is anchored with TWO Forewords by two organizational leaders, Alan Webber, Founding editor, Fast Company magazine, and Joel Birnbaum, Senior Vice President of HP Labs, and Barbara's boss, now retired. Barbara's list of personal friends is stunning, they occupy high positions in global movements and activist organizations. She picks up the phone and calls them with no more concern than calling one of her children. She herself, reflecting on her own relationship with 40-year partner, Stacy, took a major role in convincing HP top management to include domestic-partners in the HP healthcare system, well before industrial America bought in to that inclusion, very common today.

Lastly, a personal note regarding Barbara's work which involved corporate management, in the 2000+ years, when Carly was CEO. Like me and many, Barb was excited when Carly was hired, and appreciated her visionary support and her deep understanding of complex social and political issues. The book ends on a positive note, in the early months of Carly's tenure. Carly's overall impact on HP became more controversial with time.

John Minck

March, 2020