Hewlett‑Packard Company
We have had the privilege of working with this great company since 1988. Our work has occurred in various divisions, from Corporate Quality to the Integrated Circuit Business to the Printer Divisions, to the Ink Jet Business. The following are some expressions of what our work has provided in various divisions of Hewlett Packard.
“My first introduction to the work Amba provides was June of 1988. I was a Hewlett-Packard general manager responsible for closing down Hewlett-Packard’s bipolar IC shop in Santa Clara, California. The situation at this time centered around 180 people feeling an incredible loss and anger over something they had worked very hard to preserve. These people were restricted to their jobs and not allowed to transfer. In addition, orders for the product they produced doubled in quantity yet we remained on a two year closing schedule. We needed help in focusing our energy on achieving more than four times the productivity the organization had achieved in the past. We needed dramatic change quickly. The 20 Santa Clara managers were introduced to the work Amba provides. This work opened large areas of possibility for doing our job in a far more productive way without working harder. With coaching from Amba we were able to convert possibilities into firm action plans. The work moved people beyond what is bad about this to what opportunities does this experience give me . Hewlett-Packard was extra supportive in providing professional resource and assistance in the people transformation brought about by Amba’s coaching.
The results were … Closure occurred within one month of the original 24 month schedule, more than two times the original estimate of product was produced, and over one hundred and fifty of the 180 employees involved accepted into new jobs at or above their previous pay level.”
INK JET BUSINESS UNIT
GARY EGAN, OPERATIONS MANAGER (RETIRED)
I would say your work not only saved hundreds of millions, but even more importantly, it was a critical difference that enabled us to create a worldwide organization that delivered an almost unheard of average of 56% cmpd growth rate per year for 20 years thru several generations in a new technology without ever going into backlog no matter how many printers we ended up selling, and doing it more profitably than anyone expected. Your contribution helped us create an organization that successfully put cooperation above destructive competition, when everything was calling for the latter. The enabled revenue dwarfs the money saved, because it also enabled printer revenue. It was truly extraordinary. And our organization had a great time with each other doing it!
GREG MERTEN, WORLDWIDE
MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS MANAGER (2024)
“Amba began working with Hewlett-Packard Ink-jet Components Division in August 1991. Our organization is split over three distant sites. However, our work requires us to have very close working relationships. Historically, the two USA sites exhibited greater than normal mistrust of each other. The Challenge of Leadership program has significantly helped us to shift the non-trust to a trust level which has created much stronger work team relationships. The contribution Amba brings to an organization is focused on its individuals. The work is unique because it brings the real competency of the individual into their visible action arena by opening up to them who they can be as contributors and the sense of ownership and power they have as Leaders in Action . Fully embraced principles taught by Amba has made dramatic changes in team attitudes. Amba as an instructor is unique in her commitment to coaching for change in the individual. She is intense and genuine. Nothing less than a successful opening for people to reach the fullness of their potential is acceptable.”
INK JET BUSINESS UNIT
CHERYL KATEN, R & D MANAGER
“Your work with groups is very unique in that it draws out personal values of the participant and allows these values to become a foundation to be used as a source of power in facing challenges. This breakthrough in perspective, power, and leadership, occurs in four days of training because you tap human potential versus offering six steps or other prescriptions usually offered in leadership training. The approach taps the uniqueness of the individual and converts the potential leadership that is there to active, dynamic, leadership.
Because I have attended your courses and because my project and section managers have also attended, we work more effectively as a team. This has allowed an acceleration in decision making and problem resolution that I feel has saved us 10-20% in schedule time. We have also been able to organize projects in new and different ways. I have reduced my management staff by three without a loss of effectiveness and with clearer communications using what I learned in your class.”
INK JET BUSINESS UNIT
“I have worked with Amba for seven years. She has a very rich background in development and has worked in a large variety of situations and firms. I am particularly impressed with her ability to reach people on an individual level, that results in a huge shift in their commitment to development and to grow from their experiences. I believe this ability to connect with people is due to Amba’s commitment to her own continuing development. Such has been my own experience. My career has been much more rewarding and successful since taking Challenge of Leadership and other ongoing work over these past years, largely due to my new found willingness to confront the risk of changing myself to be more effective with other people. It has changed my whole life. This has also been true for many people in my organization whose approach to life and work have been fundamentally altered by learning and applying basic principles of effective human relations they have learned from Amba.
My career has been much more rewarding and successful since taking this program and other ongoing work over these past years, largely due to my new found willingness to confront the risk of changing myself to be more effective with other people. It has changed my whole life. This has also been true for many people in my organization whose approach to life and work have been fundamentally altered by learning and applying basic principles of effective human relations they have learned from Amba.”
(Below are comments Greg made re: the contribution made to his organization.)
“I believe the work we have done on causing, learning, and enhancing relationship creates a virtuous cycle. You can go ever deeper and deeper in creating relationship. You can associate the more powerful the relationship, the more powerful the results. I believe the work we have done on causing, learning, and enhancing relationship creates a virtuous cycle. You can go ever deeper and deeper in creating relationship. You can associate the more powerful the relationship, the more powerful the results.
Before we started working with you, when there were problems in the business and people brought up issues, because we didn’t know how to communicate, relationships got damaged. We were less able to take on difficult issues with each other because there was no trust. Now, because we work on trust, we are able to take on new levels of achievement…we can take on issues because there is trust.
I can demonstrate hundreds of millions of dollars were accrued to the bottom line because of our development work.
We are able to deal with difficult strategic issues proactively vs. reactively. Where the relationship is insufficient we used to put off dealing with issues. Now we maintain sufficient relationship.”
SAN DIEGO PRINTER DIVISION
LARRY BROWN, GENERAL MANAGER
“Hewlett-Packard has offered management courses since the 1950’s, but never anything like this program. Virtually all established management programs deal with perspectives on what we already know, securing futures which are invariably extrapolations of the past. Gale Leadership Development LLC empowers us to deal with perspectives on that which we don’t know, securing possibilities for futures which may never have existed. In our business, such futures offer competitive differentiation, which is the only truly robust, long term strategy for success.
This program is not only straightforward and business-focused, but is uniquely different and appealing. Unlike language and culture which are by themselves parochial and possibly limiting, the notions of trust, integrity, and connectedness are universal in their meaning and power. Our firm’s strategic intent includes increased levels of work force diversity and globalization, especially in the areas of manufacturing presence and securing business charters for our overseas operations. Providing safe environments in which personal and group relationships can be opened and nurtured is a top priority for us. Gale Leadership Development LLC provides vehicles for such openings and is therefore essential to our strategy. We have already had managers from Europe and the U.S. benefit from the program.”
RICH DUNCOMBE, R & D MANAGER
“Employee satisfaction in the lab was at an all time low. People had worked in the same organization for a long time and had developed a lot of dysfunctional relationships – including peer and supervisor levels. The biggest lever you pulled was working with the management team on an individual and team basis. We shifted towards owning the health of our relationships with each other. The organization responded very favorably when they saw the integrity and openness of the managers as we worked through these problems. In fact, there was a 40% increase in the number of employees satisfied with their job.”
CIRCUIT TECHNOLOGY GROUP
FRED SCHWETTMAN, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT (RETIRED)
“In considering the events of the past year, it is clear to me that the work you did with us enabled us to make the decision to break with the past. You may recall in our very first discussion, that I was concerned that much of what we learn from consultants is dissipated after a few short months. Your work is certainly an exception to that comment. I continue to see and experience the power of your message in our daily activities. Even in cases where the managerial performance is marginal, it is improved from what it would have been without the training.”
BOYD LYON, MANAGER
“I have come to believe that leadership is a force that causes value to be created where it might not otherwise be made available. I have also come to find that my effectiveness as a leader has much to do with the intersection of my commitments and collaboration skills. Over the past twelve months, I have been exploring this terrain in a one-on-one coaching partnership with Amba Gale. Looking back I am startled by the impact of Amba’s methods and by the business results and personal progress that I am achieving. I have found two aspects of this coaching particularly valuable. First is the power of wrestling with choice and the clarity of commitments (stands) that will drive my business leadership and my living. Second is the attention paid to communication, listening for the concerns and contributions of partners, and working on distinctions that shape the quality of collaboration on and off the job. Amba’s approach to this work is relentless in her search for insight matched to practice commitments that yield value in the workplace and across the field of life.”
SITE FACILITIES
HOWARD TEMPLETON, HUMAN RESOURCES
“Perhaps the most important benefit Facilities has gained from The Challenge of Leadership has been the reintroduction of two dimensions essential for success in any organization – trust and integrity. They had become dormant in Facilities and without them the group had no possibility for the future. With their renewal, Facilities has shifted to believe that possibilities have few limits. This organization recently had one of the largest one year shifts from negative to positive responses on the employee survey ever recorded. A 5% shift has been determined to be statistically significant within the company. Facilities averaged a 15+% shift by both individual question and category. Challenge of Leadership and the work of all the members of Gale Leadership Development LLC were a tremendous asset and partner to me as the internal person working through the interventions to help these folks get themselves back on track. In countless ways the course distinctions were a catalyst to the work already in process. This relationship truly became a synergistic one and the results speak for themselves. The experience has been one of the most rewarding of my career in Personnel and has had a profound effect on each and every one of the attendees.”
KATHLEEN TORRES, MANAGER
“You write so beautifully and I am very moved by your account of our shared experience. I have been deeply and forever changed through my experience in the HOL and feel extremely blessed to be a part of such a wonderful community! Thank you for your leadership, your coaching, and your commitment to creating communities of leaders who are free to express themselves through their heart. I can’t think of a bigger gift to give another human being (not to mention the fact that it is a gift that grows exponentially as it is given through them to others). You do awesome work!”
CARI DORSCH, MANAGER
Joy of Living plays out in my life every day.
Professionally, I now innovate my destination consciously aware of integrating the power of choice into my career. A key phrase that sticks with me is that everything is temporary and everything is just for right now. When I’m triggered I fall back on temporary as my grounding equanimity and when I’m thriving I fall forward into loving it right now. A major shift away from living life in my head to living life in the world. My journey to a board upon which my game is played continues. Sometimes crazy days it feels like a game of Go Fish, other times a fulfilling challenge of Stratego combined with fast paced Slap Jacks.
Personally, the graduate Sangha was transforming for me as I felt love and acceptance in a group I had just met. Feelings that I historically would have dismissed as unauthentic from anyone I was just meeting. The experience enabled me to break down barriers to vulnerability & to take a more proactive approach to intimate relatedness and seeking the connections to people that fulfill me. My steps closest in here have been amazingly rewarding. I’m excited about the next steps and continuing my relationships with members of this Sangha.
Thank you for the opportunity to share and re-engage. Best wishes and love,
CARI DORSCH