HP's Garage Rules

A few weeks ago I wrote of a list of top performer competencies. When I read today's post on Wired's Epicenter Blog about the twelve rules that served Bill Hewlett and David Packard (and their company - HP) so very well, I thought there would be value in linking to those rules also.

Here's HP's Rules of the Garage:

• Believe you can change the world.
• Work quickly, keep the tools unlocked, work whenever.
• Know when to work alone and when to work together.
• Share tools, ideas.
• Trust your colleagues.
• No Politics. No bureaucracy.
• The customer defines a job well done.
• Radical ideas are not bad ideas.
• Invent different ways of working.
• Make a contribution every day. If it doesn’t contribute, it doesn’t leave the garage.
• Believe that together we can do anything.
• Invent.

In case you were wondering about the garage reference -- HP was founded in a Palo Alto, CA garage sixty years ago in 1939. Many assert that HP's very existence led to the technology powerhouse known as Silicon Valley.

My favourite rule is the first one....which one is yours?