The 4H's came from the summer of 2003 when I had just been fired as the CFO of Vericept.  I needed to find a job and wanted to think of a way to interview prospective management teams/CEO's.  I figured if we had values consistency, then maybe I wouldn't get fired again. (I had also been fired in 1999 as a VP Sales from Decisioneering.)  So I used the conflict that I had had in the past with others to realize that conflict is really just two values systems colliding.  From that collision you can learn what your values are and aren't.  I came up with Honest, Hungry, Humble and Smart that summer but we (thanks Dave Fredericks) refined it to the 4H's in the fall of 2003 at Decisioneering (I had been hired back as CEO).