What I Saw McKinsey Get Wrong at HP And Couldn’t Stop

I knew the play.

That’s what makes this one hard to write.

McKinsey came into HP with a clear recommendation: flatten the org, cut management overhead, drive efficiency. Reduce management layers so that no manager has fewer than three direct reports. Wider spans of control. The analysis was rigorous. The benchmarks were real. The comparison companies had impressive logos. The conclusion arrived with the kind of confidence that doesn’t leave a lot of room in the meeting.

I’d heard that confidence before. I’d had that confidence before. Years earlier, I was the one walking into a room with slides full of best practices and a certainty about what the org chart should look like.

So I sat in that meeting at HP knowing exactly what was happening. Not suspecting it. Knowing it.

What McKinsey never saw from the outside was what those “management layers” actually were. At HP, engineers took on leadership roles because they were the best in their field. They still designed. They still built. They still solved problems alongside their teams. The title said manager. The function was something else entirely.

The org chart showed overhead. The culture was carrying something the org chart had no way to represent.

The recommendation was approved.

Dozens of experienced engineers and technical leaders (people who happened to have “manager” in their title) were eliminated. Decades of institutional knowledge walked out the door because a best practice said the org chart should look different.

I watched it happen. I couldn’t stop it.

It doesn’t stay in the boardroom.

My son was living with me in a corporate apartment near HP headquarters when I took over as CTO. My wife had handled our daughters’ transitions to college. This one was mine.

We sat down and went through his class options together. He wasn’t academically oriented. He wanted to get in, get out, and get on with his life. I told him what I knew from experience. He listened the way you listen to someone when you’ve already decided. Then he registered for too many credits anyway.

The first semester was hard. He eventually graduated. I didn’t.

It tends to go like that.

That’s what mindjacking looks like from the inside.

That’s the part I keep returning to. Not that the decision was wrong. I believe it was. But that I saw it clearly and it didn’t matter. The authority was on one side of the table. The evidence was hard to argue with. The room had already made up its mind before the discussion started.

I knew the play. I’d run it myself. And I sat there and watched it play out.

There’s a version of this story where I become the hero, where I stand up, name what’s happening, and the outcome changes. That version would be more satisfying to write. It would also be false.

What actually happened was quieter and more uncomfortable. I saw it. I said something. The meeting moved on.

None of it mattered when the recommendation came through.

Is the moment already gone by the time you can see it clearly?