Pros
So incompetent at holding people accountable its easy to hide in plain sight.
Cons
Alright—if you strip out the product categories and just look at how the machine runs, a few patterns keep 1. Strategy drift at the top There’s a lingering question about where the company is really headed. When leadership narratives shift or feel narrow, teams start optimizing for interpretation instead of execution. You end up spending cycles aligning to a moving target instead of pushing something forward with conviction. 2. Matrix complexity slows everything down HP runs a heavy matrix—global, regional, category, functional. In theory, that gives scale. In practice, it creates friction. Decisions require multiple stakeholders, and accountability gets diluted. You can do great work and still feel like you’re pushing through mud to get it live. 3. Budget-first thinking vs. strategy-first A lot of planning starts with constraints instead of ambition. Budgets get locked before priorities are fully clear, which forces teams into defensive trade-offs. You’re not asking “what wins?”—you’re asking “what can survive?” 4. Market vs. global tension Markets want immediate results. Global teams think longer-term. That tension never really goes away. It can lead to reactive execution, where you’re constantly reshaping plans to meet short-term pressure rather than building something that compounds. 5. Long product and planning cycles The business runs on long timelines. That’s normal for hardware, but it clashes with how fast marketing, retail, and digital move now. By the time something launches, the context may have shifted—and you’re left adjusting mid-flight. 6. Resource reallocation midstream Even when you lock a plan, resources can get pulled into higher-priority asks from markets or leadership. That unpredictability makes it harder to build momentum or see initiatives through cleanly. 7. Hard to protect focus Because everything is interconnected, priorities bleed into each other. You’ll often be asked to support adjacent efforts “just this once”—and suddenly your core initiative is diluted. Staying focused takes real discipline. 8. Innovation can feel constrained by scale Big company advantage is reach. The downside is risk tolerance. Truly bold ideas can get softened through layers of review, testing, and consensus. You still innovate—but it’s often incremental rather than disruptive. 9. Internal signaling matters more than it should How something is presented internally can carry as much weight as the idea itself. That means more time spent packaging, aligning, and socializing work before it even gets judged on impact. 10. External pressure seeps inside Between investor expectations, cost controls, and broader market dynamics, there’s a constant undercurrent of “protect the numbers.” That can tighten decision-making and make long-term bets harder to justify.