Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 26)

PROFILE Hewlett Packard’s Sam Szteinbaum From Portfolios to People BY BRIAN SUMMERFIELD Although he didn’t start out in learning, HP CLO Sam Szteinbaum has taken to his current role with gusto. As the company continues to expand rapidly, he’s growing its learning offerings apace. or a company with more than 172,000 employees around the world, HewlettPackard Co. (HP) has a relatively low proﬁle within the technology industry. It doesn’t have the ultra-hip branding of Apple, the long and celebrated history of IBM or the omnipresence of Microsoft. What HP does have is the distinction of being the ﬁrst IT company to surpass $100 billion in revenues, a feat it accomplished in 2007. Moreover, it’s not only the biggest seller of personal computers on earth, but also the ﬁfth-largest software vendor in the world. To preserve its standing as a pre-eminent provider of technology solutions, HP relies on just-in-time, accessible and effective learning programs. This starts with Sam Szteinbaum, the organization’s vice president and CLO, who is responsible for managing learning across all the businesses, regions and functions within HP. “At HP a large portion of the [CLO] role is very , operational in terms of the execution required to train all the sales and service people around the new products and services the company is introducing,” he said. “We obviously have very rapid product life cycles in our business.” Interestingly, Szteinbaum, who holds degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of California, as well as an MBA in ﬁnance and strategic management from Purdue University, didn’t have a learning background before becoming a CLO. He started out his career in ﬁnance at HP 24 years ago and eventually moved to marketing. Prior to his current role, he served as general manager of the consumer PC business in North America following HP’s merger with Compaq a few years ago. F CLO-RADIO Listen in as Sam Szteinbaum talks about how his business background inﬂuenced his approach to learning at www.clomedia.com/podcast. These experiences — along with the numerous contacts he’s made in HP’s different business units as a result of his multiple roles in the company over the years — have beneﬁted him a great deal as CLO, Szteinbaum said. “We want to make sure that we’re aligned with the business and doing things that the business needs and values. So the operations background I have from my prior experience was one of the elements that made me attractive for this position to the head of HR, to whom this function reports.” That’s not to say he had no previous exposure to people development before he rose to the CLO position. “Even though I was a general manager in a business in my prior role, there were a number of people development activities we did in that business that came to HR’s attention. “Those were our own initiatives within the business. We felt those were needed by our people in order to have stronger engagement and get better business results. They were aware of some of our efforts, which intrigued them in terms of getting someone like myself to run the learning function.” As HP’s learning leader, Szteinbaum focuses on three key areas for the workforce: technical knowledge, sales skills and leadership development. The last sphere has 26 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • October 2008 • www.clomedia.com http://www.clomedia.com/podcast http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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