A biography for Mark V. Hurdhasn’t been written yet.
“Like it or not, at HP we are technologists, not executive compensation consultants.”
“After formulating and communicating the right strategy and optimizing operations to execute that strategy, CEOs and other top leaders then must be able to build management teams that truly understand the big picture.”
“CIOs have earned a strategic seat at the table, but now they've got to hold that seat - and the only way they can do that is to converse in the language of business value and business benefits and business outcomes that all align perfectly with the strategic agenda of the company.”
“My daughter's got a smartphone in her hand with roughly the same power as a mainframe circa 1982, and she's running around Beijing and wants an answer as fast as she can.”
“I know only a few ways to take market share and drive new revenue. I can engineer better products and services, I can build better relationships with my customers and deliver a higher level of service, or I can give my customers a lower price.”
“The more accountable I can make you, the easier it is for you to show you're a great performer.”
“Everyone wants to lead when things are going well.”
“The day you feel like you've won, you need to drive out of the parking lot and not come back.”
“I have a wife who's a great mom.”
“Executives need ample flexibility to respond to the market. That means both reducing costs and increasing innovation.”
“I have to put people in the right spot so that if they execute, we win.”
“When I was at Teradata, I got called a growth guy. And then when I became C.E.O. of the whole company, I got called a cost-cutter. Then, I came to H.P. and became an operations guy.”
“My objective with strategy is to be very repetitive, to be somewhat boring, to allow people to coalesce behind a common direction.”
“Not everyone is comfortable with being pushed.”
“The fact that everything ever works perfectly together, anybody who tells you that is pulling your leg.”
“I've been lucky to be at companies that have been at interesting intersections at the time I've been able to run them and lead them.”
“When I left HP, I thought about sitting it out for a while.”
“Most tech companies do one trick and die. If you can do two or three or four, that's where wealth gets created.”
“In times of crisis, you just have to bear down and lean on your own instincts and your own beliefs and make decisions.”
“From a productivity standpoint, you're supposed to reduce headcount on par with declining revenue. If you believe the environment isn't going to improve, you should take a bigger cut to get in front of the problems.”