Grow your career together with HPE Global IT

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When I joined HPE almost 20 years ago, I had no idea that I would grow to love my company and my job as much as I do today.  After graduating from college and holding several jobs in Houston, I was already convinced that IT was my career for life, but something was missing.  Writing programs and solving problems fed my need to learn and absorbing knowledge whenever I could however, It wasn’t until I joined HPE that I finally felt at home with a comfortable sense of belonging.

What was different?  HPE’s culture made work fun. It is inclusive and evolves as it needs over time.  Let me walk you through one aspect of our culture that really opened my eyes and I hope will yours as well.

It’s all about collaboration!  Stuck on a problem? just ask your teammates.  Need help with an idea? pull together a group of folks to brainstorm.  Not ready to take a risk? take that risk as a team!  

Our management here at HPE has always encouraged a collaborative work environment.  In Global Functions IT, we are given opportunities every day to develop business efficiencies, but the exciting part is that you don’t have to solve every problem alone.  Collaborating with others has helped me many times during my career.  If done the right way, collaboration can be a very powerful tool to help you and HPE continue to be successful. 

Today I manage a great team of people in the US & Bangalore working on projects for some of HPE’s most critical financial applications.   I never want anyone on my team to think that they are alone with a problem.  I encourage them to reach out to teammates, business partners, management, or anyone else that can help.  Everyone benefits from the group’s combined knowledge & experience which can & have resulted in extraordinary solutions.

Why does collaboration work and when does it not work?  Remember the classic mathematically construct called Venn diagrams.  Think of each person you include in your team as a circle in a Venn diagram.  Each person will bring different perspectives to the discussion, including people with varying years of experience that will give you a good mix of knowledge and fresh ideas. 

The new college hire that just joined your team might have a new technique he recently learned in college.  Another more experienced person might have already working on similar problems in his past.   Imagine now how everyone begins to narrow or refine the solution, then voilà!  The Venn diagram’s intersection personalities & thoughts found the perfect answer!   Easy right ….  well not always, but why?

To make collaboration work, everyone needs to have the right state of mind.   It requires inclusiveness, relaxation & building trust over time.  If you are naturally competitive, learn to exercise patience to allow everyone’s ideas to be shared.  Try to “hear” and “understand” what others are saying instead of thinking about what you are about to say.  Learning to collaborate takes practice!  But out of every collaboration exercise will come a solution that you can file in your career toolbox to use later.  The more you pull a group of people together to help you, the easier being collaborative will get.

If you or someone you know is looking for challenges, come join us!  We can grow our careers together!

We are growing globally and we want you to be part of our team. Explore our career opportunities for  Global IT India and Global IT USA. 

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Gayle Parker, Sr Program Manager at Hewlett Packard EnterpriseAbout the Author:
Gayle Parker is a top-performing senior IT leader with over 15 years of information technology achievements for a diverse group of Fortune 500 and smaller companies. Self-motivated manager with a record of peak performance directing global & matrix teams. Held various IT roles including Solution Architect, Development Manager, Application Support Manager, Project & Program Manager as well as Systems Analyst and Developer. Functional experience includes Manufacturing, Financial Systems Processing, and Master Data Management in Technology, Oil/Gas Industries. Strong ability in problem-solving, process improvement, communications, and interpersonal skills which promotes high confidence levels from clients, management, and peers.

Stay connected to Gayle via LinkedIn.