Duke,
The attitude that you and Lynn have frightens me, and is exactly the attitude that make these mergers fail time and time again. The combined company will go through much more protracted and agonizing woes if CPQ tries to keep it's culture, especially if they think they're going to somehow "stealthily" take over, rather than accepting the fact that they were purchased because they weren't making it on their own and they need to do things differently. That attitude results in a lack of cooperation and effectiveness within the organization. If the CPQ employees don't acquiesce and try to assimilate themselves quickly, the company is going to go nowhere. Not now, and not 1, 2 or 5 years from now. Too much energy will be spent on in-fighting and backstabbing rather than on fighting Dell, IBM, etc. The HP employees are not expecting to change their culture to match CPQs; why should they? They were the acquirer, not the acquiree. And since two-thirds of the managers will be HP managers, they won't have to.
Remember, to the victor go the spoils.
The fact that the HWP people are getting most of the management positions is how it should be -- HWP was the more successful of the two companies and the talent that got them there should hold the top slots. I pray that the CPQ/DEC/Tandem people don't do to HPQ what they did to CPQ.
Enough "soapbox"ing for me. If you guys want to have a stealth CPQ thread, there's nothing I can do. I hope, however, that you'll join the HP family on the older thread (and I've requested that the thread headers be changed in accordance with our previous discussions).
Dave |
