Encourage a Focus on Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose: Interview with David McQuarrie, Chief Commercial Officer of HP

I recently went one on one with David McQuarrie, Chief Commercial Officer of HP.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth? 

Dave: I’ve always enjoyed working in tech and have spent the majority of my career at technology companies. I started out at a small Unix distribution company and from there, moved to a sales role at Dell in Australia. During my time at Dell, I held several different roles in Asia and Europe. Following that, I moved to Lenovo, where I held go-to-market roles in Europe. My wife is from Norway, and having lived in Europe, Asia, Australia and now the US, there's always been something wonderful about the next place to move to and the next job to do. Living abroad helped me develop a broader perspective. I think having that global lens is important, especially for leaders. 

My dad worked at HP for 13 years. So, I’ve had a special connection to the company since my childhood. I grew up hearing stories about the founders Bill and Dave and the values they established. When I had the chance six years ago to join the company, I jumped at the opportunity. I’ve been at HP since, and my current position as Chief Commercial Officer is a dream role. I am so proud of the company, our culture and my personal link to HP. 

The journey to where I am today hasn’t been without its challenges and setbacks. But what has propelled me forward is curiosity. There's always been something wonderful to explore in a new country or job opportunity and that has characterized a lot of the chances I’ve taken.

Adam: In your experience, what are the keys to growing and scaling your business? 

Dave: You have to be passionate about the business and its mission, and you have to be ambitious on its behalf. It’s impossible to propel something forward if you don’t deeply care about it, which is why I’m so passionate about the work we do at HP. 

Our customers and partners will always remain at the centre of everything we do. By remaining hyper-focused on listening to their needs and innovating together we continue to propel the business forward. This is part of what we call our future-ready plan, and we believe it will help us drive long-term growth. We're reducing complexity across our business and moving with much greater speed and agility in providing customers with the products, services and solutions that enable greater flexibility, mobility and seamless collaboration. Continuing to lead with optimism is key, we are confident in our ability to serve our customers and, together with our partners, win in today’s environment.

One of the key growth drivers at HP is ensuring that everything we do is with the customer top of mind. We’re a company that creates innovative products, yes, but we don’t want to simply be known for our products—we want to be known for the role we play in the lives of our customers. Being able to understand people no matter where they are in the world helps you relate to others in a new way that I think a lot of people underestimate today.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader? 

Dave: There are the must-haves—what I call tickets to the dance—and then there are differentiators. The ticket to the dance actions are a level of speed, operational rigor and attention to detail. If you don’t have those qualities, you’ll have a tough time leading anyone. 

In terms of effective, quality leadership, you must be ambitious—not just for yourself, but for the company and the business overall. You must also be curious and lead with a transformation mindset of leaving a role better than you found it. You should have a default setting of wanting to improve the business you lead. This is a critical difference between those who advance and those who don’t. 

A leader should also improve the conditions of the people they’re working with and have a genuine interest in the people on their team. Every leader I’ve ever met has achieved success largely due to those around them. I think it’s incumbent on every leader to pay it forward to others, as we’ve all benefited from those who helped us. 

Adam: How can aspiring leaders take their skills to the next level? 

Dave: Always read. That is a huge source of inspiration and allows me to learn what I don’t know and see things from a different perspective. 

Mentoring is also a hugely valuable exercise. I’ve been fortunate to have mentors throughout my career. One mentor I had was junior to me in terms of the structure of our company, but in her expert area, she was by far my superior. I credit her for helping me learn about an operational area I hadn’t previously explored. Others around you can provide great value if you have the humility to look for it and ask about what you don’t know. My advice is to show an openness to learning from them, and a vulnerability to acknowledge what you don’t know. 

This also includes not being afraid to fail. In any transformation, the risk of failure is foremost in many people's minds, and it can be amplified when the stress of a macro situation creeps in. You don’t have to do everything perfectly—but with effort and experimentation, that willingness to try and fail, is where I see people make great strides. 

I would also encourage aspiring leaders to stay focused on the long-term vision. Nobody remembers the stumble of the person who’s running a marathon, they just remember that the person finished the race. Too often we focus on the stumble, but that’s not the priority and should not stop us from running the marathon. If you remember your purpose, the fear falls away.  

Adam: What are your best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders? 

Dave: I'm a big fan of a couple of things that I've been practicing for, in one case, 20 years and in the other case about 14 years. The first is lateral thinking. Too often, I see linear thinking, which is the opposite, applied to business problems. I’ve been practicing lateral thinking for many years and encourage my teams to do the same. While some people are naturally good at it, as a growth-mindset person, I think lateral thinking can be practiced and learned. I'm inspired every time I encounter it. A couple of my mentors have been among the best lateral thinkers I've ever worked with. This style of thinking can’t just be for leaders, it’s a big differentiator and it must be something that characterizes the group. It needs to be something leaders reward, practice and apply. 

My second piece of advice is to focus on what you can control. This stems from stoicism which is a philosophy that I've been following for some time now. It orients us around ensuring we allocate our time, energy and brainpower to the parts of the world that we inhabit, that we can either influence or control. This is how you stay focused and prepared for achieving long-term success. Too often, leaders become paralyzed by what they can’t control. For example, if you’re a mid-level manager in a corporation, you likely don’t get to set the strategy. If a change in strategy is upsetting, that feeling isn’t productive. Instead, use your time finding the parts you can influence. As you become more senior, that which you influence and control changes, and you shouldn't assume that it's always infinite, or that it's always what it was five or 10 years ago.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams? 

Dave: My philosophy is grounded in autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is about giving your teams control of what they do and how they do it. Studies show that employees who are given autonomy are self-motivated, inspired to achieve, and more likely to engage in their work. The inevitable result is a boost in productivity.

I help my teams achieve mastery by encouraging them to be disciplined in as many parts of their life as they can. Mastery is about continuous learning, and it never ends. Especially in the world we live in today where customers’ needs and technology are rapidly evolving and businesses are expected to lead, there will always be something new to master. Through employee development, we can offer our people the skills they need to improve their day-to-day work and reach their desired outcomes. We can unlock their creativity and get them more invested and inspired about their future.

I also strive to ensure my teams have clarity of purpose within their role and empower them with autonomy to do their jobs well. Purpose can be defined by your organization’s goals, but I also encourage my teams to identify and lean into their own purpose.

There’s a difference between leadership and individual contribution. If you can stay focused on getting the best out of your people, everyone wins – the team gets to do what they like and are good at and build their careers. 

Always leave a role, team, or job better than you found it. This requires discipline – another quality that I think distinguishes great leaders from everybody else. A lot of leaders get into the trap of getting busy and a day, a week or a month goes by, and you’ve done the job, but nothing fundamentally changed. It’s important to develop the business and people, evaluate progress to make improvements and deliver results as you go. At HP, within the Commercial Organization I lead, that’s my philosophy, that we have great people, and we make sure they have the autonomy, mastery and purpose to execute their jobs.

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales and branding? 

Dave: Our efforts are rooted in trust. HP has been a trusted brand since its inception. What we overwhelmingly hear from our partners and customers is that trust is what they expect from us. In today’s world, trust is more important than ever, whether it’s a customer’s data, cybersecurity, or how you partner to make sure you focus on the customer’s benefit instead of your own. With sales and marketing, especially with large companies, there is the risk or tendency to move away from customer focus. It is important to make decisions from the lens of, will this serve the customers? If it does, then it will in turn serve the company. 

My advice is to put the customer in the center. At HP, we’ve moved decision-making out from the middle toward the markets and customers because faster decisions get made the closer you get to the customer. And they are more accurate and more beneficial. 

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Dave: I would reiterate and encourage a focus on autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Whether we’re an individual working our way up at the company or a leader managing a team, we have to ensure that we ourselves or our teams are achieving that and focusing on growth. At the same time, we can’t forget to be curious and lead with a transformation mindset. 

I would also encourage the mindset that says the more humble and open we are to learning how we can improve, the better we get. And an openness to failing. The mediocre are the only ones who never fail. 

I feel very fortunate to have achieved what I have. I feel a great responsibility to pay it forward and help others along whatever path they wish to pursue. And at least in my experience, it’s the combination of being a voracious consumer of information, being humble about the mistakes that we have made, or may make, and being disciplined and focused on what you can control that will positively influence leaders and teams.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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