Your experience sounds like from some sci-fi book written by Isaac Asimov. My reality looks way different: there was Vice President from USA checking the German branch couple weeks ago. 3 days of management presentations full of inaccurate information to show how excellent are we managing our projects. The Vice President had absolutely no interest in the real projects in the labs. Nobody does, project checklist and weekly hours reporting are only 2 interesting things. I am still dreaming experiencing management HP Way, but it’s not happening. Current leaders are accountants and not technical leaders anymore.