CS: What's been your biggest mistake in business, and how did you recover?
NB: It came down to the ramp process. We ramped pretty aggressively. When you do that, it's very challenging. And it's especially challenging to find people who are philosophically aligned. I believe our sales force needs to be representative of our customer base. If we don't have the diversity of our customer base, if we don't embody them ourself, we won't be serving the customer well. And I think we've done that. The HP way is very important to us. The open-door policy. The management by walking around process. The ability to have a learning organization is so important. When it's my contact center manager, coach or whomever. What we found was we hadn't necessarily hired the people who were comfortable with that attitude. We hired in three waves, and after the first wave, we changed the way we interviewed. We looked not just at your resume, but we began role-playing. We put you in the type of role we expected you to play, somewhat reflective of the job.
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A Chat With Nikhil Behldirector of sales centers, HP Home
CS: What's been your biggest mistake in business, and how did you recover?
NB: It came down to the ramp process. We ramped pretty aggressively. When you do that, it's very challenging. And it's especially challenging to find people who are philosophically aligned. I believe our sales force needs to be representative of our customer base. If we don't have the diversity of our customer base, if we don't embody them ourself, we won't be serving the customer well. And I think we've done that. The HP way is very important to us. The open-door policy. The management by walking around process. The ability to have a learning organization is so important. When it's my contact center manager, coach or whomever. What we found was we hadn't necessarily hired the people who were comfortable with that attitude. We hired in three waves, and after the first wave, we changed the way we interviewed. We looked not just at your resume, but we began role-playing. We put you in the type of role we expected you to play, somewhat reflective of the job.